


treading softly on freshly fallen snow

by cassandor



Series: with wills of phrik and hearts of kyber [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Cassian Andor-centric, Cassian Backstory, Fusion of Star Wars Legends and Disney Canon, Gen, POV Cassian Andor, Pre-Canon, The rating is for violence, in which the writer is an environmentalist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-11-09 20:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11112567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandor/pseuds/cassandor
Summary: The Cassian Andor backstory: we unravel it together.(He's been in this since he was six years old. At twenty, he is sent back to Fest.)





	1. Prologue: Remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> My first multichapter fic; a love letter to Cassian, winter, and the Rebellion.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~1 BFE. 
> 
> He hopes, next year, he won’t miss the stories.

Cassian stands still and solemn as his face bears the relentless beating of soft snowflakes turned into icy weapons by the violent wind. He clutches the bouquet of nightblooms tightly to his chest, their deep black colour rivaling Fest’s night sky on a clear night. Tonight, however, the sky is painted white with snow stirred into a frenzy by the wind.

“Are you ready?”

His mother’s voice is steady as the wind whips around them.

Cassian nods, shivering.

“Let them go.”

In unison they open their hands, palms turned to the heavens, and the dark, dark petals of the nightblooms scatter in the wind. They perform an elaborate dance in the chilly air, swirling alongside the snow, tracing dizzying patterns around Cassian and his mother.

The souls of the departing; departed. One final goodbye.

He doesn’t hear it over the howling of the wind, but Esper quietly murmurs: “We’ll miss you Jer. May the Force be with you.” His sister didn’t even have a name to be used in her prayers.

Instead, Cassian watches the flowers until they disappear from sight, mystified by the invisible Force that welcomes them into its final embrace.

“Ready to go inside and join the others?” His mother takes his gloved hand in hers.

Inside was warm, cozy, comforting; the sounds of laughter competing with the roar of the fire. But Cassian wants to stay here: let the blizzard nip his face a little longer, let his fingers grow number. Let his heart get a little colder. 

“Stay as long as you need to, Cass, but we need to move on eventually. That’s what this is for.” Esper’s hand unconsciously drifts to her stomach. “We do not fear Death on Fest. We accept it.”

Eventually, the wind dies down and snow falls gently from above, returned to its normal state.

Eventually, they go back inside.

He yanks off his gloves, fingers stinging as they regain warmth. He methodically stomps the snow off his boots, and someone shoves a cup of something warm into his hands. The conversation dims a little as their guests acknowledge the first-time mourners.

“It’s your turn to tell their story.” The older lady, face riddled with lines etched by time, moves aside in her seat. She pats the spot next to her. Esper sits down, gathering the fabric around her, and motions for Cassian to sit in her lap. He obliges.

There’s a moment of silence as his mother wonders where to begin, what to say? She presses her face into the back of Cassian’s neck.

“Tell us how you met him, Es.”

She smiles into his hair.

“We were caught in an ice storm…”

Cassian dozes off, lulled by his mother’s rhythmic storytelling and the warmth of the blanket around him.

He hopes, next year, he won’t miss the stories.

(There is no next year.)


	2. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 13 AFE.  
> Welcome home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think now's a good time to mention that it is safe to assume they're speaking Festian in all of his memories.

“Cassian,” Mon Mothma begins. Cassian can feel the layer of apprehension prickling under her stately demeanor and he immediately knows something is amiss. He keeps his face impassive as she approaches him from the other end of the room. “I have a mission for you.”

He lets his eyebrow quirk up in interest. The Senator had clearly worked around protocol to personally deliver this briefing. Cassian watches her, waiting for the explanation as the green glow of tactical maps settle across his features.

“You are free to decline my request. This meeting is off the record.”

Cassian leans against the table, elbows locking as he braces himself. There it is.  She needs something done, and the only person she can turn to –

“I believe you are the only person fit for this job, Cassian. If you find that what you will not be able to do what I am about to ask of you, I will gladly look for another prospect.” Something shimmers in her eyes. Regret, almost. Concern.

Cassian fights back the urge to accept, his fingers digging into the table as if to hold him in place. Years of fighting for the Rebellion and he still found the irrefutable need to leap at every opportunity to serve the cause.

“I can only make a decision if you give me the details,” he grins. Mon smiles back but it does not reach her eyes.

“I need you to visit Fest.”

* * *

The mission is rather simple and is below his station. Paperwork is far below the skillset of one of the Rebellion’s longest-serving spies. That is, if it wasn’t for his ‘history’, as the Senator had put it. He was to meet with the leaders of the Atrivis Resistance Group, reaffirm their allyship with the Rebellion Against the Empire, and secure their integration into the Rebellion as a whole. Simple enough, more technical jargon than anything else.

If it wasn't for his  _history._

Cassian accepts the request in a heartbeat.

“Thank you,” Mon Mothma says, and her hand twitches, as if she was about to set it on his shoulder. She opts for words instead. “And I’m sorry.”

He gives her a look mixed with appreciation and acceptance. “You won’t be able to find anyone better.”

She gives him a small smile, which disappears after he exits the room.

“May the force be with him,” she murmurs.

* * *

Cassian’s mind sifts through long-buried memories as he sits in the pilot’s seat. He mindlessly turns his datapad over and over in his hands, the datafile on the Atrivis Resistance Group burning bright on the screen.

Names he hadn’t heard of in years scroll by, their familiarity muffled by standard Aurebesh. Faces he’d almost forgotten gaze back at him.

There were two names he yearned to see, two faces he wanted to burn forever into his memory. But they were long gone and his longing brought no relief.

He stares, unblinking, at the face of the current leader of the ARG. SeñoraTravia Chan stares back, her cool defiance radiating from the screen. He knows the name and recognizes her face. The holo is outdated by current standards but still more recent than his last memory of her.

The flickering image of Travia’s steely visage invoked not his last memory of her, but the first.

* * *

Even at six years of age Cassian was deeply in tune with his mother’s emotions. He had immediately noticed the worry seething under her mask of calm, how she walked around the house with an air of unease. He suspected the cause was the nightblooms that had suddenly sprung up around their small home that morning, and said likewise.

“We do not fear the nightblooms,” Esper recites, reassuring herself as much as Cassian, “they are a welcome part of Life.” She shifts her gaze from the snow-dusted scenery outside to look down at Cassian and smiles. “Your father should be back soon, that’s all.” She cups his chin in her palm and squeezes his cheeks. “Nothing for _you_ to worry about, little one.”

“You can’t call me that much longer,” he grins. “Because soon _she’ll_ be the littlest one.”

Esper smiles and her hands drift to her ever-growing stomach.

Someone knocks the door.

The memory is spotty but the image of his mother’s back as she faces the two silhouettes in the doorway, the reflective snow outside casting a bright aura around them, is still clear in his mind.

“Travia, Matias, how was the protest?”

“There was a riot,” Travia begins, and there is a palpable shift in the air. “And Jeron… I’m so sorry.”

Esper turns and tells Cassian to go to his room, and the memory ends blurry, cold, and grey.

* * *

“Cassian.”

Kaytoo’s voice pulls Cassian out of his reverie.

“Are you alright? We are about to reach the rendezvous point.” Kay waits a few moments, and then adds: “I did advise you not to accept the mission as-”

“Kay, it’s okay. I’m fine.” Cassian is jolted back to reality by the Basic rolling off his tongue. “This mission is like a break for me.” He offers Kay a smile.

“Whatever you say,” Kay resumes looking out the viewport. “I don’t like this. We aren’t even landing on the planet, we’re docking with their ship.”

“Fest is a polluted warzone, Kay. You read the reports, didn’t you?”

The words burn on his tongue.

_A polluted warzone._

The icy planet suddenly looms into view. At this distance all he could see were its swirling atmospheric snowstorms and the mountain ranges that curled around the surface like scars.

_Fest._

Neglected by the Republic, exploited by the Confederacy, ruined by the Empire.

_Home._


	3. Flurries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A flurry of activity; a flurry of snow.
> 
> "Home. The word grazes against the roof of his mouth, a concept long forgotten sitting like a snowflake on his tongue."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Coincidentally, this fills @thefulcrumcaptain's Monday Memories prompt #1: snow.

The snowdrifts are almost taller than he is and his feet are ensnared in the innocently fluffy trap every time he takes a step. Freeing his feet from their icy prison takes all the energy he can muster, and the movement sends snow exploding into the air and tumbling down the insides of his boots, soaking his thickly woven socks. But this does not slow him and he laughs cheerily as he bounds through the snow, methodically kicking his feet up into the air. The hood of his jacket hangs uselessly around his shoulders as his focus is no longer on pushing it over his head and rather on chasing the snowflakes round and around their front yard.

“Cassian!”

He turns at the sound of his name. His mother watches him from the doorway with a clearly exaggerated frown tugging at her lips. She makes her way over, pulling her shawl tightly around her as she picks a path through his tracks in the snow, and kneels to cup his face in her hands.

“Your ears are so, so red, my darling.” She grins, and slides a pair of new earmuffs over his head. “There you go. Now you won’t catch cold.” 

* * *

 A green light flickers to life on the control panel and Cassian slides the headphones over his head, flipping the comm on.

“Please identify yourself,” a man’s voice crackles over the headphones. Cassian looks out the viewport and watches the flagship of the ARG shimmer into existence as he presses the mouthpiece to his lips.

“This is Lieutenant Cassian An-”

“Cassian,” a woman’s voice interrupts, “I hoped they’d be sending you.”

“Señora Chan,” he responds, slightly startled by the disruption, “it’s good to be back.”

“Welcome home,” she replies in Festian. “I look forward to seeing you,” she adds.  

“And you,” he replies likewise, and then the connection cuts out. He’s left lost in thought as he watches the larger ship reach out through space and sends a tractor beam to snag their ship. He pictures Travia standing at a viewport overseeing the entire procedure. 

Something about the exchange sends waves of unease rolling through the edges of his consciousness. _I hoped they’d be sending you._ She’d been deliberate with her word choice, offering warmth and welcome but keeping her voice cool and measured, her authority tangible even over the comm system as she took control over the conversation.

Kay turns towards him, acutely aware of his disquiet as always. “I have a bad feeling about-”

“Kay, not now.” _I don’t want to hear it._

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

* * *

 He realizes, disgruntled, that Kay had been right. Not that he would admit it, but Kay had correctly predicted that he would have a hard time.

Not Cassian, though. The droid.

Cassian is met with figuratively open arms. The ARG lacked the rigid military structure of the Rebel Alliance, instead preferring the organic, collaborative methods with roots in Festian culture. Even so, their strict demeanor rivals that of their oppressors – the Empire – when the need arises.

_The best way to beat the enemy is to master their own game._

He isn’t expecting a warm welcome, but facing icy stares makes him feel like a stranger in his own home.

Then Kay moves beside him, and suddenly he understands.

“I’m Kaytuesso, a reprogrammed Imperial droid. This is Lieutenant Cassian Andor. I didn’t realize you two expected droids to do the introductions.”

“Kay!” Cassian exclaims, internally mortified at the raised eyebrows and pursed lips of the rebels facing him.

“Reprogrammed?” the female rebel, dressed in the pressed clothes of a high-ranking aide, asks. “Is it safe?”

Cassian starts talking before Kay can do any more damage. “Yes, I reprogrammed him myself. If you are concerned, I can tell him to stay on the ship.” Kay’s head swivels to look at him.

“Cassian, don’t make me stay on the ship.”

Regret at bringing Kay claws it way up Cassian’s insides. He offers the aides a small smile. “I assume you’ve given me a room to stay on your ship?” They nod forcefully, aggravated by the youthful eagerness to please. “Then I think I could leave him there.”

“We can take him there,” the other aide says slowly, eyeing Kay’s scratched up Imperial insignia warily. “If that’s alright.”

“As long as they don’t power me down,” Kay protests.

Cassian nods, biting back a broader smile. “I think that’s a fair enough request, don’t you think?”

The aides nod again, and one of them heads down the corridor, Kay striding beside him.

“I’ll take you to the Commander.”

* * *

The aide, Cata, ushers Cassian into a meeting room.

Cassian walks in, and half expects Travia to rise from her seat and welcome him.

Instead, he’s looking at the back of a repuslorchair. It swivels around in mid-air and Travia faces him.

“Please, take a seat.” She motions to a chair at the head of the table. “We have some catching up to do.”

Cassian sits down, still taken aback by the state of the Commander of the ARG, and grips the side of the table.

“You’ve grown. How long has it been? A decade?”

He nods. “Just over.”

“The galaxy has seen much change since then. The grip of the Emperor has tightened, but now more systems are slipping between his fingers.”

“We were one of the first,” Cassian adds, and something turns in his stomach. _First but not fast enough._

Travia inclines her head. “ _We_ were.” She studies him closely. “How good is your Festian? I have to say, your accent is impeccable even after all these years.”

Cassian straightens in his chair. “Festian is my mother tongue,” he replies cooly. “It is easier than Basic for me.”

“One can bundle up against Fest’s cold but you can never escape its chilly grip,” Travia muses. “That is our story.”

“It is, indeed.”

“It’s the reason of our culture’s survival.” Travia gestures and the hoverchair moves to an empty spot at the table beside Cassian’s seat. “How is Senator Mothma, by the way? I only had the chance to send her a short message requesting an emissary. Her service to the Rebellion is commendable, and we are forever grateful for their assistance in our sector. Please, send her our regards.”

“I will.”

Travia shifts in her chair. “But I feel as if I’m speaking to a stranger. You were the one who helped establish our connection with the Alliance!”

“It was my father, mostly, from what I've heard.”

“Yes.” Cassian watches as Travia mulls over some unseen memory. “Yes, your father laid the groundwork. For the Festian Resistance, and our bond with the Alliance. But your actions were the catalyst that brought us together. And you were so young, then.” She glances at him. "You're quite young still." 

“All I did was use the connections he had already established. You speak so highly of me.”

Travia waves her hand. “Don’t undermine yourself for the sake of humility, Cassian. Humility doesn’t do you any good in the cold or on the battlefield. You are one of our best minds.” She looks at him thoughtfully. “Though, I suppose we shouldn’t expect any less from the son of two of Fest’s brightest children.”

Thankfully, Travia turns away to look through a viewport and Cassian takes a moment to steady himself. He knew this mission would be hard, but even the slightest mention of his parents is sending him off-balance. He takes a shaky breath and exhales slowly, feeling Cata's gaze boring through his back.

 _“_ _I knew your father. Not very well, but enough to know that he was a good man,” Mon Mothma says, her snow-white robes swaying as she speaks. “I know that both the founding members of the Alliance and the Atrivis Resistance Group both had an immense amount of respect for that man. Our relationship is becoming strained, and that’s why I’m sending you, both as an envoy of the Rebellion and as Jeron Andor’s son, to convince them to strengthen their commitment to our cause.”_

“Thank you.”

“You must be restless,” Travia says suddenly, turning to look at him.

“Pardon?”

“You’ve been sent as a representative for the Alliance to discuss our future, but here we are talking about the past.” She presses her lips together. “I regret that we cannot start our discussions until my Chief of Staff arrives from an assignment. He’s been delayed and won’t arrive for two more days.”

“Oh.” _So much for a quick mission._

“Do you want to see your childhood home? I understand you’ve come a long way to be here and it would be a shame if you didn’t use this delay as an opportunity,” Travia says casually.

It takes years of spy work to prevent his jaw from dropping. More than the offer, the fact that his former home would still _exist_ shocks him. 

“I… thank you. But-”

“I understand that you hesitate to accept something that seems to use our resources on a whim, but we can spare a ship and a team to go visit the surface. Please, take your time before responding. You aren’t needed back at the base that quickly?” Cassian hesitates before nodding, overwhelmed. “Excellent.”

“I… I didn’t think it’d still be there. Or that it’d be safe to go back.”

Travia’s gaze returns to the viewport, where Fest hangs just out of reach. “You're not wrong to assume so. The pollution from the phrik factories have ravaged our world. Land once covered in pristine white snow now lies barren and muddy. Not even the hardiest wishbloom dares to blossom on the land poisoned by the Empire’s greed.” Cassian watches as she becomes absorbed in thought, the rest of the universe shrinking to focus on the snowy planet in her view. Slowly, he rises and joins her side at the viewport, and begins to pick out the factories: dark splotches of disease on an icy canvas. “The toxic fumes slowly attacked our remaining population, bringing disease that left dead bodies in its wake. Our population dwindled. Children were being born with deformities, if they even made it to childbirth-”

Cassian is a spy, and the memories evoked by Travia’s remarks only sets his jawline, muscles clenching to hold back the memory of blood and tearful screams. But Travia is not only a seasoned politician and leader, but someone who had known him long before he knew the Rebellion, and so she notices his unease immediately. The only sign of realization she shows is an undetectable shift in her posture, and a verbal apology:

“I’m sorry, Cassian. I just remembered.”

He tilts his head up, gaze straying away from the brown patches on Fest’s landscape to Travia’s reflection in the transparisteel. “It’s alright, Travia. That was more than a decade ago. Our people have suffered so much more since then, and as a leader and strategist it’s your duty to keep the bigger picture in mind.” Cassian pauses, forcing the words caught between his lungs, pushing them to the tip of his tongue. “She didn’t even have a name.”

Travia hums in agreement. “Your mother is the bravest woman I’ve ever had the blessing to meet, Cassian. Not many could recover from something as devastating as that, and I wouldn’t blame them. But Esper... she only came back fiercer.” She raises her chin and looks to Cassian. “It’s people like you – and your parents – that the ARG and the Festian diaspora so desperately need. The thinkers, the leaders, the fighters. The ones who always move on.”

She turns to look at him, and their eyes meet.

“I’ll take you up on your offer. I-I want to see my home,” Cassian manages to say. _Home_. The word grazes against the roof of his mouth, a concept long forgotten sitting like a snowflake on his tongue. But he says it and he feels a rush of warmth and emotion flowing through him and he has to press his hands against the cold transparisteel of the viewport to stay still.

Travia’s lips curl into a small smile. “Perfect. We’ll head out tomorrow morning. I’ll let Cata show you to your room.”

“Thank you.” He hesitates at the finality in Travia’s voice, and realizes the conversation is over.

“It’s nice to see you, Cassian.” She turns the hoverchair away from him, away from Fest shining brightly in the distance, and moves towards the door. Cata reaches out to open it and gives him a curt nod. “It was about time you came back to your people.”


	4. Purity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There’s a cacophony of emotions bursting inside him - anticipation, apprehension, nostalgia, grief, a flare of hope, and more he can’t even label – almost too many for him to handle."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also for @thefulcrumcaptain's prompts #2 "innocence lost" and #3 "family". Potential tw in the end notes.

Cassian should’ve realized something was amiss when the dayblooms turned black.

Even a withered daybloom retains its bright colour, rivalling the shine of snow even in death. The permanent white hue is a gift of the Force, they say. A sign that their promise of life and hope will always live on, even after the death of the messenger.

But these particular dayblooms had turned a sickly black. Such a thing was so preposterous that Cassian mistook them for the iridescent nightblooms that sprung up on the day his mother learned of his father’s death.

The Remembrance Festival was not yet upon them and so the two of them were still mourning. Loved ones were constantly going in and out of their home, and even though the flow had slowed to a trickle, their presence made Cassian’s job all the easier on that early morning.

He’s out of the door in an instant, his jacket left neglected on its hook – something his mother would chide him for afterwards – in favour of finding help quicker. He catches his aunt mere steps from their home.  

“Tía, tía,” he tugs on his aunt’s flowing skirts, his round cheeks going red from the bitter pre-dawn cold. “My sister is coming.”

She looks down at him as she takes his hand off her tightly woven skirts. “She’s not due for at least another month.” Her eyes are narrowed in disbelief and her lips pressed into a hard line.

“But-” Cassian turns and catches the eye of a neighbour. “Tía Maria!” he calls. “My sister is coming!” He misses the glance the two women share over his head. The second lady picks her way along a well-travelled path in the snow and is soon kneeling beside him, the rising sun illuminating her profile and casting a shadow that stretches across the snow.

“I’ll go check in on your mother.” The same disbelief written in his aunt’s eyes tinges her voice. “You go wait with your aunt, dear.” She straightens up and says something to his aunt that he doesn’t hear over the blizzard of thoughts swirling in his mind.

If all went well, he’d have a sister before the next sunrise!

“Come on, then.” He’s pushed along into his aunt’s home out of the storm that follows. He’s barely aware of being ushered into a chair as the prospect of having a younger sibling buzzes around his ears like the iceflies that hatch in pools of melted ice on a rare day above freezing.  Eventually pure exhaustion gets the better of his childish excitement and he dozes off in a pile of blankets.

He’s startled awake by the creak of the door. He tries peering over the chair for a better vantage point but the angle is all wrong so he relies on his ears. All he hears are hushed voices mingling in the air but a few minutes later his aunt packs up her things and leaves Cassian under the care of his cousin.

He was right, then. Cassian settles back into his nest of woolen blankets whose warmth lulls him to sleep with a satisfied smile.

The next time he’s awoken by their star shining brightly in the middle of the sky. Its light crawls across the room and comfortably settles on his face. Cassian stretches, the blankets shifting and draping themselves off the arms of the chair. 

“You’re awake.” Cassian rubs his eyes and sees his cousin press a hand to his shoulder.

“Is she here yet?” He blinks, giving him a bleary-eyed, toothy smile.

He shakes his head. “They didn’t tell me.” His gaze rests on his younger cousin for a moment, and then he tugs the blankets closer around Cassian. “I’ll get you something to eat.”

His aunt comes to check in on them just as his cousin presses a bowl of warmth and spice into his hands. She brings in a gust of bitterly cold wind with her that sweeps the steam away from Cassian to a death in the rays of the midday sun.

“Tía, is she here yet?” he asks, all wide-eyes and expectant hope. She shakes her head and wordlessly presses a hand to his forehead, pushing floppy bangs out of his face. His gaze turns to his meal, bottom lip thrust forward with disappointment.

 _Patience, Cass,_ his mother reminds him for the umpteenth time.

His aunt’s turning to leave as the door opens once again and another chilly breeze enters the house like an intruder heralding the apocalypse. Cassian pays no heed to his uncle’s entry and instead picks at his food when he catches his aunt’s whisper–

_We can’t save both of them. One life for Fest, one for the Force._

The temperature in the room drops a thousand degrees, and it isn’t because of his aunt opening the door to leave. His hopes melt away as rapidly as the handful of snowflakes turning to icy droplets on the floor.

He knows who he wants.

 _I want my mother._  

Slowly, slowly, like ice melting and refreezing in cold sunlight, he lets go of his dreams of becoming an older brother. His meal cools, forgotten, as Cassian’s stomach fills with dread. His uncle attempts to make small talk to no avail and instead settles on quiet conversation with his cousin.

Day gives way to night and Cassian watches, with unseeing eyes, his uncle bustle around their home.  His mind is on his mother – _please, let her be safe -_ as a warm drink is handed to him.

“Drink, Cassian,” and somehow his uncle knows he knows. “Whatever happens, we must take care of ourselves. Life has both sweet and spice and we must be able to deal with both.” He gives him a small smile. “Like this.” Cassian accepts the mug – and the advice – with a reluctant nod.

When his aunt returns, half the drink is gone, its contents still lingering on his tongue and the sides of the cup. Cassian straightens up immediately. “Can I see my mother?” he asks. His aunt looks slightly relieved – he didn’t ask for a sister.

“She’s resting, but yes. I’ll take you home.” Cassian tosses the blankets aside, neatly finishing off his drink and thanking his extended family for the hospitality in childish eloquence.

As they walk over, his aunt says quietly: “I know you need your mother. But I think she needs _you_ more now.” 

Cassian hums an, “okay, tía,” in response. He doesn’t really understand the difference but he never needs to, for when he clambers up in the bed beside Esper she says:

“I’m sorry, Cassian.”

He snuggles into her side and replies: “It’s okay. I want you more than anything else.”

He doesn’t see it in the dark but she smiles and pulls him close, a physical weight lifting a mental one off her mind. “It’s just you and me then, Cass,” she murmurs, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“You and me against the galaxy,” he says.

They lie in the warm silence for a long time - both unbearably tired but inexplicably unable to fall asleep.

* * *

 He's awakened by a loud rap of knuckles on durasteel. Cassian sits in the dark and lets his eyes adjust to the light brought in by the slit underneath the door before he fumbles his way around the unfamiliar surroundings of his bunk on the ARG’s flagship.

The door glides open with a click.

“Lieutenant Andor, we’ve prepared a ground crew to take you down to the surface.” He wonder's if Cata always looks this unimpressed, or whether she just doesn't trust him. “Commander Chan wants to inform you that they’ll be headed out in a standard hour.” 

Cassian nods. “Thank you.”

“I hope you had a restful night?” she asks, voice quirking upwards.

Cassian runs a hand through his hair. “Yes,” he lies. “Tell your Commander I’m grateful for the hospitality.”

The restlessness follows him all the way to the planet. The shuttle that takes them there is cramped: it fits Cassian, two ARG soldiers, and the pilot. He initially protests the security arrangement – _I was born and raised here, after all –_ but Travia insists, and for fear of offending the woman he needs to convince, he relents.

He also suspects the two soldiers are more than just protection against Imperials. Two sets of eyes to watch him.

Spies for a spy. It seems ridiculous. But Travia wouldn’t be running a revolution in an Imperial-controlled sector for a decade if she had decided to be more trusting.

The soldiers weren’t the only reason Cassian feels uneasy. There’s a cacophony of emotions bursting inside him - anticipation, apprehension, nostalgia, grief, a flare of hope, and more he can’t even label – almost too many for him to handle. He manages to close the hatch in his mind, shoving the long-repressed memories back down into the darkness and locking the cage shut.

The lock grows weaker as the pull of Fest’s gravity becomes stronger and suddenly he’s thankful for the mask that’s handed to him. He slips it on and the world blurs behind the visor, behind the dizzying reality of the world that awaits him. His homeworld. 

“The air pollution’s pretty bad,” the soldier explains, voice muffled by their own mask. “It’s not toxic enough to kill a human overnight – well, not yet – but the rebreather is just a precaution.”

Cassian nods, tightening the strap at the back of his head. It’s a fairly old piece of technology, dating back to the rise of the Empire – but Clone Wars-era Fest had only rudimentary tech, so this was an improvement. The realization settles in his gut like a drink gone sour. The supposedly ‘archaic’ way of life of Fest had been the root cause for its neglect during the Repbulic’s prime. Cassian’s expression darkens. Of course the rich and powerful Core Senators wouldn’t be able to appreciate the low-tech (but well-developed and complex) ways of the Festian people. Of course the Confederacy used this neglect to its advantage. And of course, nobody had realized the Confederacy and the Republic were one and the same.

It’s with this unsettling thought that Cassian is brought to the present with the bump of landing gear striking the surface. There’s the muffled static of the pilot informing the flagship of their arrival, the clicks of restraints unfastening and then there’s only the groan of the shuttle door as it rises – the final barrier between Cassian and his homeworld crumbling away. Bright light comes tumbling through the opening and he has to wait before his eyes can see anything more than a harsh white haze.

He’s risen before the others, making his way to the outside world in a dreamlike trance. The crunch of snow under his boots is unsatisfying: the layer of ice crystals is too thin, too flimsy, too lifeless. The buzz of iceflies is more prominent than in his memories, and despite the rebreather he can taste acrid air on his tongue.

When his eyes catch up to the rest of his senses, what he sees knocks the air out of his lungs.

It’s his mother.

He blinks rapidly, trying to chase the stinging sensation out of his eyes.

She’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: insinuated miscarriage.


	5. Decisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "On that day, they both realized this: the war had come to Fest."

“Mamá!” Cassian cries out, stumbling into the main room of their home.

Esper turns away from a conversation with a woman he vaguely recognizes, polite expression turning to worry in a heartbeat. He doesn’t want to intrude and the concern written all over his mother’s face only makes him feel worse. _I am six, I was almost a big brother, I am old enough, I shouldn’t be bothering her._

But the nightmare sinks its teeth into his memory and cries for her once again. Esper rises from her seat and kneels in front of him.

“What is it, Cassian?”

He looks up at her with grief-stricken eyes.

“Was it a nightmare?”

He nods with a sniffle and extends his arms. Esper nods at him sadly as she hefts him up.

“I saw… I saw…” he says between gasps. “A lot of white.”

“Snow?” his mother asks, hair falling over her shoulder.

“No… something… something else. A lot of… scary things.” Cassian’s face contorts as he tries to find the words. Esper bites back a frown.

“They’re gone now, right?” He nods. “So what is there to worry about?”

There was a lot to worry about. The white-shelled _things_ marching towards the horizon he knew and loved. His mother’s long black waves of hair in disarray and clothing bloodied, standing at the entrance of their home like a wraith. He shudders at the image.

But Esper is alive, and he’s in her arms. She sits back down in the chair with Cassian in her lap.

“You don’t have to go back to bed.” Esper worries her lip. “Sit here with me, if you’d like, but I’m in the middle of something important so you need to be very quiet, okay?” Cassian nods, head rubbing against her arm. She smiles and turns back to the lady in the opposite seat.

“Sorry about that, Travia. Cassian’s a good boy, he won’t disturb us.” He smiles into her chest.

Travia’s eyes flicker to the six-year old curled up against his mother, hair sticking up in tufts of dark brown. “Of course. Children are the building blocks for our future, and you know what people have said about him. A leader in the making.” Her gaze returns to Esper. “He should be the least of your worries. If I could I would encourage everyone to be like you: working to secure our future both literally, through our children, and figuratively, through the Festian Resistance.”

“Is that what you’re calling yourselves now?” Esper asks, subconsciously patting Cassian’s back.

Travia offers her a hard smile. “As much as I agree that it sounds pompous, we need to be united under one banner.”

“Did the Confederacy suggest it?”

Travia doesn’t answer her question. “The Confederacy has been gracious enough to fund our activities against the Republic’s militarization and defend ourselves against Mantooine's insurgents.”

“Don’t you ever wonder why?” Esper asks. “Do they really have our best interests at heart?”

“They built the phrik factories for us. They’re giving us an _equal_  place in the galaxy.”

“But why?” Esper represses a shiver from going down her spine, remembering the day – four years ago, now – that she had asked Jeron the same question. And now he had died without finding the answer.

“The Confederacy of Independent Systems is made up of planets and people like ours. Scorned by the Republic, _we_ want to stand on our own feet and separate ourselves from their ineffective government. We will show the rest of the galaxy what _outcasts_ _,_ " she spits out the word, "are capable of.”

Esper doesn’t say anything, only makes a show of nodding.

“I understand your apprehension, Esper. Especially since they’re offworlders and some of their members are wealthy beyond imagination. But all they have done for us is good. I believe we can trust them. And now they’re funding our transition into a militi-”

“You’re _what?_ ” Esper asks.

Travia meets her gaze. “Yes, we’ve decided enough is enough. Their Clone War, their Clone Army, is slowly making its way into our system. We must fight back before its too late.”

“I understand.” Esper sighs. It not what she or Jeron had wanted, but since when did their _wants_ materialize into reality? She looks down at Cassian, now fast asleep. It seemed that he would have to come of age in a war-torn galaxy. But Esper swore, as long as she lived, he would not have to die in one.  “What do you need me to do?”

Travia clasps her hands together. “I’m not in the position to ask anything of you. I’m eternally grateful that Jeron passed the mantle of leader-”

“He didn’t think of himself as a leader,” Esper says softly. “But he knew you would be excellent in the position. And you have.”

Travia inclines her head. “Thank you. As I was saying, even though I have the title of being the leader of the FR, I don’t have any authority to tell you or any Festians not involved in the resistance what to do. Even then, I don’t have the heart to ask you to fight, especially after…” her voice trails off.

“My mind is willing. The body will follow soon after,” Esper straightens in her seat, one hand still on Cassian’s back. “I am no withered flower. What do you need?”

Travia’s gaze flickers to Cassian once more.

“You were trained in our arts of self-defense, correct?”

* * *

Cassian cries out again. His voice is haggard with time and deepened with loss. He pushes their door open and blindly stumbles into the main room of their home.

He leans, falls, collapses, against the door. 

It creaks shut with a thud, leaving Cassian to look around the treasure trove of memories alone. He tugs off his mask with a gasp and gazes upon his old world with new eyes, blinking owlishly as they readjusted to the natural light.

_I'm home._

Cassian is suddenly, painfully aware of the decisions made in these old chairs that went on to radically alter the fate of his people, and perhaps the entire galaxy. These critical discussions occurred beyond his comprehension, perhaps spoken into existence above his head as he slept in his mother’s arms. These were decisions he would be able to criticize now, if only he remembered them.

It was a blessing and a curse. Maybe in a world where he remembered those early morning discussions, he’d be lamenting all their blunders. Maybe it was better he didn’t remember the secrets whispered in the dead of night.

He looks out the window, the Empire’s touch more evident on the landscape than in his memories. Everything was tinged gray, and acrid smoke hung low in the skies above the factories.

This is a blunder he's lamenting.

The gradual shift of the galaxy from a corrupted Republic to an outright dictatorial Empire, right under the noses of billions of beings. He can’t blame himself, for he was a child. He can't even blame the Festians as a whole for they were so disconnected and knew little of the darkness that shrouded them - at least, far less than the Senators and Core Worlders who had wantonly blinded themselves from the Outer Rim’s suffering and their own tarnished hands.

He sinks into a chair. It feels stiffer and smaller than he remembered. _Everything_ felt smaller: the low doorways, the tiny rooms, the windows, the house, the planet itself. After a decade of wandering around the galaxy, he realizes that everything once significant meant nothing, and everything he’d taken for granted was unfathomably precious.

Like his seventh birthday. It was a quiet affair, the howling winds of blizzards having been traded for the silent hush of snow dusting windows, the sweetness of cake tingling in his mouth.

Not even a day later, a ship landed on Fest.

His mother had given him an old datapad, preloaded with books. Cassian wasn’t quite sure why she’d suddenly taken an interest in his learning Basic. He reckoned it may have had a connection to the big war the elders murmured about when they thought the children weren’t listening. Like everything else his mother told him to do, he did it to perfection. He found himself alone at home for longer and longer periods of time, leaving him nobody to practise with except his worn out stuffed Ewok, which listed to the side as if it was listening.

Cassian didn’t recognize the Republic markings, but he peers out the window on his tiptoes at the sound of shouting. Hands and face pressed to the pane, he watches as a small group of clone troopers march off a ship.  

The Republic wasn’t here for them but Cassian didn’t know that. All he could understand was his nightmare had come to life. He staggers back from the window, not realizing he was calling for his mother until suddenly she was there and holding him close, smothering her fear for the future with love for the boy in her arms.

“It’s okay,” she coos, “we’ll be alright.”

On that day, they both realized this: the war had come to Fest.

Somewhere in the background, his dinged up datapad continues to chirp about the past tense.

 _He was scared. She was determined._  

Cassian finds himself standing at the entrance to his small bedroom, the stuffed Ewok long dethroned from his bedside by his old datapad – surprisingly still in one piece – and a slingshot fashioned from scrap metal.

He carefully perches himself on the edge of the bed. It creaks, rickety legs barely supporting his weight. It’s smaller and flimsier than he remembers but it is the most comfortable bed he’s ever known. Here he dreamed of travelling the galaxy as a family.

He’s returned, now, but without a family to welcome him home. Only ghosts.

Cassian’s fingers graze reverently over the slingshot before he grasps it tightly.

He hears stones hitting plastoid.

He hears the crack of already weakened armor.

The other, older children whisper around him. “Do you think this will work?”

“I hope so. Let’s chase those kriffing bucketheads off our planet,” someone mutters.

“Isn’t _kriff_ a bad word?”

“We’re not kids!”

“He is, he’s the youngest!” A shuffle of bodies, a nudge.

“I can _hear_ you,” Cassian whistles through the gap in his teeth. “And I’m just a good a shot as any of you.”

“Better,” someone says just as Cassian lets go and a rock connects with the back of a trooper’s helmet. It turns away from where it stands sentry by its ship.

“Hey! Who’s there?” it shouts in Basic.

The children duck out of sight behind the dilapidated remains of the factory’s guardhouse. Cassian strains to hear for the sound of boots crunching in the snow, of a static-ridden voice calling for backup – _no, please no, I don’t want to get in trouble, what will my mother do –_ and thankfully hears nothing.

He sighs in relief. One of the older boys peeks out.

“Hey - hey guys! It took off its helmet! Look!”

The children lean forward in excitement. Cassian gets a glimpse of dark hair cropped close to tanned features. He gasps.

The clone troopers are _people._

The slingshot drops into the snow.

Something cold is pressed into his hands. Cassian looks up.

“What are you waiting for, Cassian? Are you too much of a baby to fight those _offworlders_?”

He looks at the bottle in his hands. The glass mingles with the sunlight, casting colourful patterns on the snow. Only the older kids dared throw bottles, and none of them even remotely grazed the troopers. He swallows, hard.

"They're bad guys, Cass." 

 _For my father,_ he thinks, because hadn’t his father died trying to stop this very scene from playing out? From the offworlders from sending their armies onto his planet? And now they’re everywhere, the Republic’s eyes on Fest. Monitoring the factories, they said, but all of them – even the children, _including_ the children – knew better. The Republic never cared for them until the Separists extended a helping hand. Until they began to stand on their own. 

The troopers are scary, they are bad, they need to leave.

He throws the bottle into the air like a prayer and it shatters into a thousand bloody fragments.

The children of Fest scramble to their feet, kicking up snow in their wake as they run.

* * *

Cassian sits on the floor of his room, ear pressed to the closed door. His heart pounds against his ribs and he wonders if the entire galaxy can hear it. If not the galaxy, then at least his mother, who sounded furious.

 “-he _wounded a clone trooper,_ Travia. What if they hurt him? What if they use this as an excuse to brutalize us?” Esper never raised her voice. Anger seethes underneath, like cold currents in deep ocean water. Waiting to pull its victims down and under. Anger at who, Cassian wasn’t quite sure.

Probably him.

“We need to drive them away, Esper. _We_ need to fight them. Words are useless now, they died with Jeron. The children took the fight into their own hands, and now Cassian’s are bloodied. They’re only doing what you’re training the adults to do.”

“These are _children._ I can’t believe the others are allowing their children to do this.”

Travia clicks her tongue. “You knew this would happen when you named him.”

A sigh punctuates the air. “I knew, I just hoped it wouldn’t happen.”

“Don’t let your love for him turn him into a coward, or worse, a victim. He’s a bright boy. You know his spirit. One of the other children told me he felt guilty the whole time, and they had to _tell_ him it was for a befitting cause. Esper, he’s not _like_ the others. He isn’t thoughtless, isn’t even _angry_. He does it because he feels he needs to.”

“For the greater good,” Esper murmurs.

“No mother wants to see her child become a combatant. But…”

“Our situation doesn’t give us a choice. I know.” 

Travia sighs. “I’m not in any place to tell you how to parent your child, Esper. But when it comes to war, you can either be a good parent or a good warrior. _That_ , I know. Not to bring the dead into this, but we both know what Jeron chose.”

“He didn’t pursue violence.”

“But we are, now. He chose to fight with words, and we must now fight with weapons. We have no choice. It seems the Republic is only capable of hearing the clink of credits or the chime of blasterbolts.”

There’s a long silence and Cassian presses closer, wondering if they had lowered their voices. Esper had fallen silent, and he wished he could see his mother’s face.

_It’s okay, mamá. I won’t do anything bad anymore. Even if it’s for good._

“You don’t need to decide overnight, Esper. But please, don’t let this stop you from helping us. The Confederacy is giving us the credits, but they can’t give us the spirit.”

“I’ll consider it,” Esper says with finality.

* * *

 The universe snatches the decision from her.  

The Empire rises the day after.


	6. Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Whatever the truth may be, the reality is this: the Separists, and Fest’s only chance at sovereignty, are gone."

**~~**3277 LY**~~  0 AFE**

“The Republic has fallen.”

Cassian can’t pinpoint the voice in the ocean of murmurs, but he feels the heave of Esper’s chest as she sighs. “What difference does it make to us? The monster has merely discarded its mask.”

They sit hunched close together around the sole screen in their part of Fest that has access to the HoloNet. Unsurprisingly, this is the only broadcast that reaches the Outer Rim without interruption. Even then, static flickers at the edges of the Chancellor’s – now Emperor’s – features as he speaks, as the speech restarts from the beginning.

Cassian couldn’t make sense of his proclamation the first time, Basic and political ideology tangling together in a messy web of truth and lies, along with the sleepiness tugging at his eyelids. This time, he presses close against his mother as she murmurs an explanation under her breath, adding commentary as she translates.  

He watches, wide-eyed, over his mother’s shoulder.

It seems they had all been mere pieces in a much, much, larger game – a game where the designer and sole player was the Emperor himself. That fact seemed to come as no surprise to any of the adults in the room, though every so often an exclamation of disbelief rises above the muttering.

“Are the Jedi bad, ma?” Cassian asks. Esper looks down at him with surprise flashing through her eyes, a burst of confusion dissolving into understanding.

“N-no. Not by principle,” Esper says, and she’s far, far, away, beyond the other planets and star of their system, looking to a memory from long, long ago. “They believe in the northern wind like we do, but they call it the Force.”

“The Force?” Cassian crinkles his nose, trying the Basic in his mouth. _Northern wind_ sounds far more elegant, capturing its flighty and powerful essence. _The Force_ sounds vague and meaningless. Esper smiles at his expression, amusement barely touching her lips but sparkling in her eyes.

 “Yes. But they decided to confine it into a rigid structure, to serve the Republic that they thought was doing good. When the Republic fell, so did they.”

“They thought the Republic were the good guys?”

“Yeah. Like we thought the Separists were.”

“I thought they were, ma?” Cassian frowns, burying his face into the softness of his mother’s sweater.

Esper sighs, and notices the extra pairs of eyes turning in her direction. His simple question is a matter of debate, the source of most of the murmurs that rippled through the gathering like waves:

Were the Separists really a proxy for the Jedi? For the Republic? For the Emperor? All three?

Or had they, like the Emperor said – perhaps the only truth in his entire speech – been eradicated by the last of the Republic?

Whatever the truth may be, the reality is this: the Separists, and Fest’s only chance at sovereignty, are gone.

She takes Cassian’s hand in hers and squeezes it tightly.

“I don’t know,” she admits, and it’s important for her to do so because her son needs to understand the complexity of the galaxy he’s going to inherit. “Now the Repu–Empire,” she corrects herself, “controls the factories.”

The room quiets for a moment. Night has fallen outside, but Cassian can picture the newly christened stormtroopers patrolling the snowy alleyways outside, troops already swarming around the houses of their most vocal opposition. Worry flutters in his chest and writes itself in the creases on his forehead. Esper takes her free hand, puts it around his shoulder and presses his head to her arm to stroke his hair.

The speech drones on in the background, punctuated by the odd burst of static or hacking cough:

_“…the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society, which I assure you will last for ten thousand years. By bringing the entire galaxy under one law, one language, and the enlightened guidance of one individual, the corruption that plagued the Republic in its later years will never take root. Regional governors will eliminate the bureaucracy-”_

“He means _democracy_ ,” tía Maria scoffs. “He’s establishing a dictatorship.”

“Not like he wasn’t already a dictator,” Metias grumbles. “Those _emergency powers_ ,” he spits out the phrase in Basic, “were just a front.” He mutters a curse at the fresh-faced politician who paved the way for Palpatine’s rise to power.

Cassian sniffs. “What are we going to do now, ma?”

Esper turns her gaze away from the screen towards her son, who’s looking up at her with concern tugging at his features. Disgust climbs up her throat. _One language, one individual._ Would speaking in their mother tongue – their _only_ tongue, for most of them – become a crime? Would their system be ensnared in the gloved hand of some Imperial _governor_ , some offworlder who wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a rebel from Fest and a soldier from Mantooine?

She would much rather live in poverty than in chains.

But if Esper has her way, Cassian would not have to settle with either option. He will be free and happy.

_“…We will defend our ideals by force of arms. We will give no ground to our enemies and will stand together against attacks from within or without. Let the enemies of the Empire take heed: those who challenge Imperial resolve will be crushed.”_

She raises her chin, and Cassian watches as the glow of the flames in the fireplace flicker across her features like a revelation.

“We will fight,” she proclaims, just as the Emperor calls for the galaxy to sing praise of the Empire to the _barbarians_ of the Outer Rim _._ “Like we always do,” she continues, the worry in her voice smothered by steady, cool anger. _First we fought within ourselves, then we fought with Mantooine. We protested the Republic, and now-_

“We will fight the Empire,” Esper says out loud.

“It’s going to be a lot harder to do so, Esper,” Travia says from her seat on the other side of the room. “They are here too, after all. Brought in like an infection.”

“Are you willing? Are we _all_ willing?” Metias asks, looking around the room.  

The answer comes from an unlikely source, his voice starkly young and chipper against the rumble of adult voices and abrupt coughs.

“I am,” Cassian says, leaning up and away from his mother to look his paternal uncle in the eyes. He glances over at his mother before adding, “I’m willing. Not because I want to _fight_ , but… I want to _help_.”

Esper gives him a sad smile, and he wonders if she’s mad at him for wanting to fight. She cups his face in her hand.

“Okay, Cass. We will follow our little hero’s lead.” He smiles broadly at her.

“Are you sure?” tía Maria asks.

“What do you mean?” Esper drops her hand from Cassian’s face and crosses her legs. She knew _exactly_ what Maria was about to say, and prayed her worries wouldn’t tear down her own resolve. Esper shoots her a glance, a warning mixed with suspicion, but Maria looks away towards the others.

“Esper,” Maria begins. “We both lost our spouses on Carida. And that was supposed to be a _peaceful_ protest against the _Republic_ , who at least pretended to care. This Empire, the veil they’re hiding behind is so thin even a seven-year-old can see through it,” she says, nodding towards Cassian, who feels a flare of both pride and indignant childishness straighten his posture. “It barely exists. The Republic was ignorant, corrupted at the worst. The Empire – it’s _built_ on fear.”

“Maria-”

Maria raises a hand. “I know you want to resist. I do, too. But I think, I think this is something we should wait out.”

“He said a _thousand years,_ ” Travia interjects. “A thousand years. Can you wait that long? Do you want your grandchildren, _their_ grandchildren to be suffering? Is that what Jeron and Isabel and so many others died for?”

“They weren’t planning on _dying_ for the cause. You and Metias were the lucky ones.” Travia recoils, leaning back against her chair.  “They were murdered in cold blood.”

“We do not _fear_ Death on Fest,” Esper says suddenly. “Unless you have mistaken our _reverence_ for the nightblooms as fear.” It’s Maria’s turn to be taken back.

For the first time in a long time, Esper wishes Jeron was by her side. Nobody could string words together like he could. Nobody knew their history as well as he did, and those were two things Jeron would’ve called on to sway people into action.

She bends her head, catching Cassian watching her closely with dark eyes, _Jeron’s_ eyes, glimmering in the light of the fire.

If not for him, then who?

“The Empire is built on _fear_ you say? I agree. That man,” Esper even points to the screen for emphasis, “believes that an iron fist and heavy chains are what keep beings in line. But there is something that exists within all of us that can loosen that fist and break those chains. Do you know what that is?” she asks, and Maria shakes her head. She turns to Travia, to Metias, to the others, and lastly her own son.

_“We need to pick a name,” Jeron says. “Jeron means ‘a rebel’ and Jeronimo means ‘a rebellion’. Esper means ‘hope’, and Esperanza is ‘to hope’. Something that works along those lines…”_

_“Cassian,” Esper replies. “To become a hero.”_

“It’s hope,” Esper says, and a smile at saying her own name tugs at her lips. “And rebellions are built on hope.”

It’s not enough to unite all of Fest under one banner – Travia’s _Festian Resistance_ – but, Esper thinks, it’s enough for Cassian, who looks at her with awe.

She hopes it is.

* * *

**3 AFE**

Esper’s words do not lead to a revolution overnight. The resistance had begun much earlier, even before Jeron Luciano Andor had brought a group of disgruntled Festians to the Galactic Senate. But it gives the Festian Resistance the resolve to act, for strength is not in numbers, but in heart.

At ten, Cassian is still small and wiry, tiny fingers perfect for connecting and disconnecting wires, for flitting across keypads (for code was merely another language to him, like Basic, or High Courscanti – but nothing has the warmth of Festian), for pressing his thumb over the wick of an explosive cocktail.

He’s inherited his mother’s tactical brain and lithe bearing, his father’s reassuring voice and incredible memory, and, they say, the northern winds have blessed him with impeccable aim – among other things. _Truly,_ the small band of rebels say, _he is a blessing from the motherworld._ A perfect warrior in the making.

Cassian knows none of that is true. None of his admirers felt the pounding in his heart or the sweat dripping icily down his neck. A perfect warrior would kill without hesitation, like the troopers that simply lift their blasters, aim, and fire. A perfect warrior would kill without remorse, like the stormtroopers who drag bloody bodies away in the snow – _necessary killings,_ the Imperial officers announce, _to crush the resistance_. _A smear of blood on white snow to prevent rebels from soiling the Emperor’s good name._

He wonders if that’s what the troopers' helmets are for. To disconnect them from the realities they were shaping with their blaster bolts.

“Death before surrender!” resistance victims cry out.

The Imperial victims say nothing, only crumple to the ground or explode into fiery nothingness.  

He can’t ask his mother why, though.

His mother is dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two disclaimers!  
> 1) The excerpt from Palpy's speech is from Wookiepedia, which is sourced from "Republic HoloNet News Special Inaugural Edition 16:5:24" aka I DID NOT MAKE IT UP NOR OWN IT *phew*  
> 2) Language disclaimer, yet again. I know the etymology/meaning of Jeron's, Esper's and Cassian's names are incorrect for both English/Basic and Spanish/Festian (esperanza actually means hope) but I once again took the artistic liberty of Festian not being an Actual Language so I threw that in there :)


	7. Desperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He catches a glimpse of his mother walking into the night, the door slamming shut behind her."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also for @thefulcrumcaptain's prompt 'death', which is also the trigger warning for this chapter.

Phrik, phrik, phrik.

The name sounds like the click of the machinery that mines the metal. It echoes the sound of workers’ blood dripping on grimy floors.

Esper’s words prove false, in one sense. The rise of the Empire brings plenty of change to Fest thanks to the Emperor’s lust for this supermetal.

Cassian sees the calloused hands of the older boys, the dried blood lining the cracked lips of older women. Machinery short-circuits into a shower of sparks, bursting open like the many nightblooms blossoming even out of season.

The Imperials push, push, push past the breaking point.

There’s a new saying on Fest. _The Empire’s glue is Festian blood._

Cassian thought it was a poetic exaggeration, until Esper walks in one night with blood glistening bright red on her hands.

“Another person dead. We thought the clones, the Republic, brought the sickness. Like parasites.” Her eyes are wide, jaw set. “It was the Confederacy.” She turns to Cassian. “It’s the factories. The smoke, the chemicals, they’re making people sick. Cassian? Do you understand me? Don’t _ever_ go in there.” She lifts a bucket, rinsing her hands in cold water.

“But you go there, ma?”

Esper rises, wiping her hands on a cloth. “If I don’t they’ll get suspicious.” She doesn’t have to elaborate further, only mutters: ‘ _what do they even use it for?’_

With the Separists dead or imprisoned, the Festian Resistance bleeds dry. Tossing bottles and ruining the machinery of Republic vehicles never required many credits, but that was all the resistance that Cassian was familiar with. He hadn’t sat at the front lines of protests, nor witnessed the tactical meetings where the first candles of rebellion were lit against the Clone War. Credits meant everything, once.

The small resistance group – the survivors of the Carida attack; older, poorer children with long legs, nimble fingers, and willing hearts; those youth who burn with fury that withstands any snowfall; those who have nothing more to lose, their lives already whittled down by ever-increasing hours in the phrik factories; and Esper and Cassian – has nothing left to fight with but themselves.

Desperate, they turn to brute force.

Esper mourns the loss of Jeron’s ideals of nonviolence – a moment of silence in the chill of the night. The quiet stillness of a sniper before the loud thud of a body hitting the ground.

The Imperials may push harder, but the Resistance pushes back.

Her arms are folded behind her as she speaks. Cassian should be in bed, was in bed, but is woken by her authoritarian voice. “If we are to fight,” Esper says to the gathering, “we must first learn to use ourselves as weapons, before we pick up any other. What use are our feet if we do not use them to stand up for our people?”

Cassian finds himself trading sleep for time with his mother even if that means he merely watches her from a distance. He sees little of her these days, even when they’re on the same mission. He creates distractions, she and her fighters attack.

Even separated, they work in perfect tandem and start to slowly chip away at the Empire’s grip on Fest.

The Governor of the Atrvis sector is crueller than most, perhaps smarting from his dismissal into the Outer Rim. His discerning eyes dismiss Fest as merely a source of labour and phrik, its _tribals_ too disorganized to revolt – they merely sing as they toss stones. A few squads of stormtroopers would be enough for them.

Mantooine, on the other hand, shone with prosperity in the golden glow of the Republic. It did not fall quietly into the Emperor’s icy grip and holds tightly to its wealth. It resists, and resistance must be quelled.

“They should be crushed,” the Governor says, clenching a fist, and signs the order for a massacre – a _cleansing_ , he words it. A cleansing of a stain on the Emperor’s throne.

Of course, Cassian doesn’t watch the scene unfold, but it’s what he pictures as he listens to the conversation between his mother and his father’s brother.

“Should we warn them?” Metias asks.

“Of course, how is that even a question?” Esper replies, an uncharacteristic amount of anger creeping into her voice. “It’s an order to _wipe them out,_ correct?”

There’s a bright flash of lightning. The increasingly common freak of electricity and nature tears violently through the pitch-black sky. Out of the corner of his eye, in the flash of light, Cassian sees his uncle nod.

“Why hold back, then?”

“Esper,” Matias begins. “Not all in the Resistance are as reasonable as you and I. Remember, the Resistance is small, and we cannot afford disagreement. Our fight runs on the blood of the most hardened of Fest’s children. They do not hold crimes against our people lightly – and those on Mantooine are complicit.”

“So? Should the children die for the sins of their parents?” Esper rises, voice shaking not with rage but hurt. She glances to Cassian who quickly returns his gaze to his screen, where’s he’s working on cracking basic firewalls.

Metias stands and starts to speak, but is interrupted by a sharp boom of thunder rolling through the air. “The Resistance deems it to be so.”

“Travia?” Esper asks. Metias shakes his head.

“She follows the will of the majority.”

Esper slowly shakes her head in disbelief. “Do we have a way to contact them? I will do it myself if I have to.”

“We do. There’s a resistance movement starting up on Mantooine. They’re calling themselves the Liberators, and the head of their movement once met with Isabel,” Metias’ voice falters, “back when Fest and Mantooine negotiated a ceasefire.”

“Maria has to know, then,” Esper muses. “And I bet she’s not willing to give the info up. She lost both her parents to Mantooine’s bombs.”

Metias sighs, and another flash of lightning lights up the room. “She won’t.”

Esper sits back down, head in her hands and Metias follows.

“I’m sorry, Esper.”

“It’s just – that could easily be us! Their resistance is only being targeted because Mantooine was wealthy under the Republic and is a threat to the Empire because they didn’t agree with the Emperor’s tactics! If Fest had a larger resistance, if we had the credits, if the factories had been more successful under the Separatists – that _could have been us._ ”

The rest of the night is silent, save for the occasional rumble of thunder, Cassian tapping at the keyboard, and the door slamming shut behind his uncle.

Everything changes after two standard weeks.

It’s the middle of the night and Cassian is awoken by a rap at the door. He tosses off his blankets and presses his feet to the ground, where the coldness seeps in past his socks. He hears the rustle of his mother’s bedsheets as she rises in the opposite room and catches a glimpse of her tying her hair up as she passes his bedroom.

“Stay put,” she whispers, but for once Cassian does not obey. He slinks out of his room, peering over a countertop as Esper tugs her sweater around her before opening the door.

It’s a pair of stormtroopers.

Cassian’s heart careens from his stomach to his shoes, and a whimper rises in the back of his throat.

They know. They’re here for him. What will his mother do without him? She’ll be heartbroken. All because of something he did on an impulse.

Why had he gone to tía Maria’s house? Why had he snuck on to her personal datapad while she fixed him a cup of coca? Why had bypassed her security and copied her contacts to a chip he’d flicked from his mother’s nightstand?

Why had he skimmed through his father’s datapad, digging until he found the Mantooinian name painfully written in Festian with a twin in the Imperial databank?

Why had he sent the message?

_They’re coming. Save who you can._

He doesn’t know, but the stiffening of Esper’s stance as she shifts her body to fill the doorway squeezes the air out of his lungs.

Had it been a mistake?

“Esperanza Andor?” Her name is butchered by Basic and the familiar static of stormtrooper helmets.

Esper’s fingers curl around the door. “Yes,” she replies firmly in Basic. “That is me.”

“You’re being arrested for unlawful acts of resistance against the Empire.”

Cassian watches, petrified, as Esper’s shoulders rise defensively. “What is your proof? Do you have a warrant?” 

A trooper turns its head to the other to hold a conversation on an internal frequency, then raises a datapad that casts a blue outline on their helmets.

“Proof of communication with the Mantooine Liberators,” the trooper says nonchalantly, as if it wasn’t signing a death order. Esper’s eyebrows draw together, and her mouth sets in a firm frown. “The comlink’s signature reads Jeron Andor. Our files indicate that he was killed four years ago yet the transmission was sent two standard weeks ago from this location.”

“The Mantooine Liberators have been wiped out,” Esper replies coolly. “This is a fabrication.”

“Some of them escaped. Including,” the stormtrooper continues, “the one you have contacted. Now, if you come with us-”

Esper turns and Cassian ducks behind the counter, out of sight.

She closes her eyes and weighs her options.

She aches to feel plastoid crack under her knuckles, feels her fingers twitch with the need to send a blasterbolt between the plates of white armour.

But complying gives Cassian a chance to live.

She holds her head high, calling out: “I’ll be back soon, Cass. Go stay with your aunt. I’ll see you in the morning. Don’t worry about me.” She raises her hands upwards with a cold smile and the trooper clamps cuffs around them.

When Cassian peeks back up, he catches a glimpse of his mother walking into the night, the door slamming shut behind her.

* * *

The sound of Cassian’s slingshot clattering to the floor jolts him back to reality.

He is not six and confused, or ten and lost, despite the memories his surroundings evoke. He is twenty and on a mission. This visit is a mere delay from the work at hand. He should be thankful for the reprieve but something seems amiss.

It’s too quiet.

The entire mission feels like the ringing in one’s ears after a bomb detonates.

He sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. The numerous ghosts of his past cling desperately to him, the shadows of their existences coalescing into something more lucid, more corporeal, reawakened by the chill air of his homeworld – but he must move on. He has work to do, for the sake of the Rebellion. The galaxy. What value did his trivial life have against the lives of billions of others? Demons grow powerless if he traps them in his own mind, away from the daydreams of the galaxy’s children.

The body follows the mind, however, so his feet take him on a journey to find his mother’s ghost. He freezes mid-step, leaning against the doorway of his parents’ bedroom.

Travia knows. She’s purposefully uncovering his vulnerabilities. What she’ll manipulate them for, he isn’t sure. His nails dig into his palms. He still feels like a piece on a dejark board, waiting for an unseen force to send him careening into the enemy.

Trying to shake off his unease, Cassian reverently steps into the room and marvels at how little has changed. The wardrobe’s doors are parted slightly, most likely moved by a draft. He opens it further, thrusting years of dust into a shaft of sunlight with a croak of protest.

Coats and outerwear hang undisturbed like memories waiting for their day in the light. He reaches out hesitantly, a tremor rippling through his hand. With a start, Cassian realizes some of these are his father’s clothes.

He’s struck with a vision of a mother with growing children, sweaters passing from Esper’s hands to theirs. He thought his mother had given Jeron’s clothes away. Not all of them, apparently.

His fingers brush over the arms of a jacket, and he falters for a moment before unhooking it from its decade-old seat. Cassian holds it up in the light of the window, pulling it taut with a snap. It’s padded with several layers, topped with a bright blue fabric that will resist even the mightiest of Fest’s snowstorms. The hood is lined with thick fur, more substantial than the worn out lining of his Rebellion-issued jacket.

He realizes it fits him. His father’s legacy sits warmly on his shoulders, a reassuring weight that wraps around his frame and engulfs him in a loving embrace.

Cassian sinks down into the mattress of his parents’ bed: where he curled up between them after meaningless nightmares now forgotten, where he lay to scrape a few silent hours at his mother’s side. His knee bumps against the nightstand, pushing one of the drawers open with a creak. He peers inside, jacket rustling with his movements, and notices a datapad – his _father’s,_ swathing him in waves of guilt – and a single image holoprojector. Cassian has the chance to quickly tuck the holo into his pocket before he gently, reverently, picks the datapad up.

Then he hears the familiar sound of blasterfire.

His blaster is in his hand in an instant. He cautiously creeps into the main room of their house, straining to listen for voices.

Cassian hears a scuffle: a poorly muffled shout. An abrupt thud. Then silence.

His eyes dart toward his mask lying discarded on the floor. Cassian lunges for it, ducking out of view and hastily slips it on, keeping his eyes fixed out the window.

And then a quick rap at the door, rattling it on its weary hinges. 

Cassian takes a deep breath and presses against the side of the doorframe. He plunges his hand into his inner coat, fumbling for his transponder. When it clicks reassuringly, he raises his blaster and nudges the door open.

Leaning out to look, he meets the steely gaze of an Imperial Officer.  With sandy blond hair cropped to regulation, the rank of Colonel etched into his uniform, a hazy, cruel smile begging to be wiped off is firmly carved into his features only to dissolve into shock.

“Who are you?” the man hisses with a scowl.

A decade later, but Cassian hasn’t forgotten.

The face of his mother’s killer.

The shock is enough to give him pause, enough time for Colonel Soryn to remove the blaster from his holster.

“You’re in for a rough day rebel sc-”

Cassian may falter, but he never fails. He feints with his blaster, drawing Soryn’s gaze and aim - then twists Soryn’s arm around with his free hand, pressing his blaster to his own temple.

“Don’t move,” he growls to the stormtroopers he knows are waiting out of sight, voice distorted by the mask. “Or I’ll shoot him.”

He looks around, hears the click of armour, spots a pair of boots around the corner. Cassian ducks, pulling Soryn down with him, and a series of laserbolts fly over his head – bright green cutting through the chilly air.

 _So much for those guards,_ he thinks, adjusting his grip to fire back with his own blaster.

He wonders if their shuttle has been compromised.

Considering the pilot hadn’t flown in to assist him, it had.

Cassian is on his own.

A stormtrooper falls ungracefully into a snowdrift, white powder sizzling under the heat of blasterfire.

He suppresses a snarl in the back of his throat. Where could he escape? The other Imperials stationed on Fest had probably been alerted to his presence, and he doesn’t know if the ARG even knows about the situation.

He returns fire, hoping.

A roar of engines pierces the sky overhead. Cassian spares a glance towards the shuttle that zooms past them.

“There was an 85% chance you would end up in some sort of entanglement with Imperial forces,” Kay’s voice bursts out of the comm in his pocket. “You’re lucky I was getting bored and had already located the nearest shuttle with fuel. Hurry up now, we’ve got company.”

* * *

Soryn crumples to the floor of the shuttle courtesy of Kay’s handiwork with an old cargo container. Cassian quickly procures a pair of cuffs and fastens the officer’s hands behind his back. Kay makes his way back to the cockpit, already remarking on the probability of the Colonel escaping and blowing their brains out. Cassian’s humorous smile fades as Kay disappears into the front of the shuttle.

He’s tempted to shoot Soryn to save them the trouble, but they – the Rebellion? The ARG? – will be able to weasel out some worthwhile information out of him. A grim realization settles in his gut. If the ARG chooses to question Soryn immediately, Cassian will most likely be the interrogator.

He shifts in his seat, still adjusting to the feel of the heavier jacket, and sticks his hands into his pockets. Something cool brushes against his hands. He pulls out the holo with surprise and rolls the Republic-era tech between his fingers, making it glint from the glow of the fluorescent lights on the celling. Cassian glances furtively over at Soryn’s prone form. The imperial’s head bumps against the wall to the rhythm of the shuttle escaping the atmosphere. Satisfied, Cassian calls up the holo.

It flickers to life, a blue glow caressing his features as thin air materializes into faces he recognizes all too to well.

His heart jolts.

Cassian is looking at the three of them: his father, his mother, and a much, much younger version of himself.

His lips part, stricken, and a noise chokes in his throat.

He raises his hand so he’s eye level with the image, which slowly begins to register in his mind. His parents look different. Cassian doesn’t know whether to blame his memory or the war.

Probably both.

The monochromatic holo doesn’t faithfully render the sparkle in Jeron’s eyes or the colour in his mother’s cheeks, but it does enough to squeeze the air from his lungs. Their faces are rounder, fuller, more youthful. He’s surprised by his own toddler self – had he ever looked that innocent?

He’s stricken with the realization of how _young_ his parents were. An idle part of him realizes he’s nearing the age they got married.

Now he’s alone, and they’re dead.

Cassian swallows, eyes flickering back to Soryn’s face where a bruise starts to darken on the side of his face. The Imperial’s eyes are closed to the world and the image of the woman he personally murdered.

Cassian’s fist closes around the holo as the memory comes to life behind his eyelids.

* * *

Esper never breaks a promise.

Snow crunches under Cassian’s boots as he sprints towards the main square: a patch of frozen snow cleared away by Imperials for their increasingly frequent _declarations_. Bystanders litter the streets, watching nervously as they huddle close together in the blue chill of the morning.  

Cassian pushes his way through the crowd and is greeted by an unwelcome sight.

A dark cloth bag over the head, knees sinking in the snow. It could be anyone, _anyone,_ but the distinct waves of black peeking under the hood give Esper away.

“ _NO!_ ”

Cassian runs, runs, runs. But the Force does not will it, or the northern wind is against it, and he slips on the ice and falls, falls, falls.

The cold bites into his skin. He scrambles to his feet, white flakes clinging to his clothes. He’s about to shout once more when a gloved hand clamps down over his mouth and another arm yanks him away sharply to the side.

“Cassian, no,” his tío Metias hisses into his ear. “Don’t give yourself away.”

He whimpers under the glove, straining against Metias’ unwavering grip. He desperately kicks against the ground but only succeeds in kicking a deep hole in the snow.

“Cassian.” He repeats sternly, pulling the boy closer and keeping his right hand pressed to his mouth. “Don’t waste her sacrifice.”

 _But she’s still alive!_ Cassian wants to scream. _I can save her! She’s right there!_

He strains for a glimpse between the gathered crowd, shaking with effort. There are a handful of people kneeling, black bags over their heads. Stormtroopers stand in a line behind the detainees as a man in Imperial uniform strides up to the front with a barely restrained sneer on his face.

Cassian had never been ashamed to cry. Crying was a part of human life as was Death, and they did not fear Death on Fest. The tears fall silently without witnesses, tracks freezing before they ever graze Metias’ gloves.

The Imperial officer removes the blaster from his hostler and raises it in the air like a warning. The murmurs of the crowd fade to silence.

“I see you have all gathered here as onlookers,” he begins in Basic. “I do not know how many of you are conspirators like these ones,” he gestures to the kneeling captives with the blaster, “But let this be a lesson for you all. _Do not. Disrespect. The Empire_.” He emphasizes the words with a wave of his blaster. “And know if you do, I will _personally_ see to your demise. Let the name Rhiott Soryn strike _fear_ into the hearts of dissidents!” He exclaims in a burst of glee. Soryn goes to aim his blaster to Esper’s head, then hesitates, as if reconsidering. His lips turn up coolly. “I am not a tyrant. I will grant all of you one last chance to disclose the names of those you colluded with. We can start,” he raises both of his hands, “with the traitors in this crowd.”

One by one, he stands behind the captives and repeats the question.

“Names. Give me names.”

One by one, bodies fall to the ground. Red seeps into the snow around them and it crackles with its warmth. Soryn’s face twists even more gruesomely as each captive denies him the information. Cassian is suddenly grateful for Metias’ presence as he turns his head into his uncle’s side, unable to watch.

“Death before Surrender!” they shout in Basic. “Our lives for the cause, our bodies for the Force!”

“So be it,” Soryn snarls, and the second-last captive crumples to the ground. “Next? Will you, at least, tell me?”

“I am not a coward.” Esper’s unwavering voice rings throughout the open air despite being muffled by the bag. Cassian looks up. “We do not fear Death on Fest. I will gaze upon it with my own eyes. Take the bag off.”

Soryn’s lips twitch with disdain. Then an idea glints in his eyes, followed by a warped smile. Cassian stands transfixed at the sight, the struggle with Metias – whose hand had dropped from Cassian’s mouth – now forgotten. “Fine,” he says, breath curling in the air like smoke. He plucks the bag off her head. “I shall see your death with my own eyes as well.” He tosses the bag to the side and it falls in a lifeless heap on the ground.

Esper’s hair floats down like a wreath, framing her face. Something about the look on her face makes Cassian start to struggle against Metias’ grip– _he’s got a blaster, right there, reach for it._ He keeps his eyes fixed on his mother while his hand reaches, reaches, reaches for the blaster tucked into his tío’s waistband.

Esper remains kneeling, with her hands restrained behind her back, but the pure radiance exuding from her resolute expression– chin up, the beginnings of a grim yet determined smile – makes her look regal in only a way Soryn can dream of. The wind picks up, pushing the hair out of her face.

Somewhere under the sorrow, Cassian feels a flare of pride. His blood is half hers.

Soryn presses the blaster’s nozzle to the back of her head. She doesn’t move – merely blinks. “Tell me,” he says, nudging the blaster. Cassian doesn’t expect her to say a name, and instead wonders if she’ll take up the others’ refrain.

The words are already on his lips when her eyes find meet his.

“Even _rebellions_ are built on _hope_ ,” Esper says in Festian, to Soryn’s confusion. Her lips curl into a smile, showing teeth, “Don’t ever lose i-”

And then it’s all over. Lulled into a sense of security by his mother’s words, Cassian is jolted back to life by the sound of the blaster discharging. The back of his hand grazes against Metias’ blaster, but it’s too late.

“No! _No!_ ”

Cassian screams because _kriff_ being discreet, his mother is dying, dying, dying.

He lunges forward but Metias still holds him back – _why, why, why?_

 _The offworlders have won, don’t you see the blood splattering on the snow?_ _She’s dying!_ The words freeze in his mouth and only sobs escape him.

Metias pulls Cassian back, back, back, further from his mother’s blood pooling on the freshly fallen snow, until the Imperials are gone, their footprints in the snow bloodless and pristine.

When he lets go, Cassian scrambles to his mother’s side, slipping on ice.

“Ma,” he murmurs. “Mamá?”

His fingers are red with cold, feeling nothing as he lifts her head into his lap. Esper’s hair is strewn in his lap like a crown, and when he pulls his hand away it’s covered in red, red, red, glittering like the veins of wishblooms.

Cassian collapses with a sob, lying against her chest. He no longer feels the reassuring thrum of her heartbeat.

* * *

The shuttle shakes as it docks into the landing bay of the ARG’s flagship. Cassian lifts his head from his hands, one of which is curled around the holo, and glances over at Soryn, who groans in pain.

He slips the holo back into his pocket, and it sits as a reassuring weight.

“What are you going to do with me?” Soryn croaks, squinting his eyes.

“We’re about to find out.” Cassian replies grimly, and the hoarseness of his voice surprises him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my longest singular chapter for anything I've written (4k!) I was planning on squeezing in one more chapter in before the cassian & kay comic drops (in two days!) but that might not be feasible. So consider this my birthday present to you guys!  
> Shoutout to everyone who listened to me whine about this chapter, thanks for lending a helping... ear. :)  
> (A fun aside: the holo Cassian finds here? It's the same one he shows Bodhi in my bassianprompts fill!)


	8. Hither

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He is numb, yet everything burns."

**4 AFE**

The Governor of the Atrivis sector is crueller than most.

Cruelty is security, and security is power. Yet he feels his power slipping away between his fingers when he sees reports from his Fest litter his screens. The ice ball is a thorn in his foot, neglected for Mantooine - the stab wound in his chest. But even thorns prevent one from moving forward.

Fest’s resistance had been slowly winding around his throat like a vine. Now it is poised to choke the air out of his lungs.

He is not the Emperor, capable of spending decades in the dark like a predator poised to strike. _He_  must fell them with one swift blow.

If these barbarians manage to succeed in staving off the Empire on their planet, who knows who they could inspire? Revolt would break out throughout the sector and the position of Governor will be worthless in the entire sector: Horuz, Spefik, Devon, Generis, Iridium...

 _He_ would be worthless, his name barred from the annals of history – never recognized as guardian of the Empire’s most glorious creation.

And _that_ is unacceptable.

“The Festian brutes are resisting the glorious reign of our Emperor,” he announces.

“They refuse to adhere to his principle of ‘one law, one language’. They have the gall to refuse their facilities to enhance the splendour of our Empire. It was _expected_ that simpletons would not be able to comprehend the Emperor’s glorious vision for our galaxy – but they continue to resist, and even oppose us, despite our best efforts at persuasion. The Empire’s greatest resource may now lie in the hands of savages, but when I’m done with them,” his fist curls, “All the glory will be ours,” he decrees, though his heart whispers: _mine._

He glances at his aide from the corner of his eye. “What worked once will work again.” A curt nod in response, and boots click across sanitized floors, fading into the distance.

With that, the heavens come crashing down on Fest.

* * *

Cassian is alone.

A tremor ripples through his body and he pulls himself tighter into a ball. He huddles in a corner, wrapped in a tattered blanket. His bottom lip trembles.

_Don’t cry, don’t cry._

_They’ll hear you._

His insides are hollow and the chill seeps in without resistance.

Cassian shivers.

He clamps his mouth shut, swallowing back sobs as he pulls himself tighter.

Ships soar above like birds of prey, weaponry shrieking like predatory calls. Explosives hit the ground, sending tremors rocking through the surface.

The wind howls in unison with the screech of lasers, whistling through the cracks.

Cassian whimpers. It echoes emptily around him. He prays and hopes and prays and hopes. He wishes his mother was beside him.

He settles on the next best thing. Lips, cracked and dry, unstick from each other as he tries to remember the words:

>   _When the song's useless because there's no bread on the table, I don't know whether to give you my heart, my voice, the flower, or some rifle-_

A boom rattles him and he presses against the wall. He picks up the refrain again, replicating his mother’s voice. The soft recital seems futile against the boom of weaponry but it wrangles his focus away from the destruction:

>   _I do know of an evil, that renders the song useless-_
> 
> _The danger of thinking is that we may understand that evil only has one name-_

Fireballs streak through the sky, leaving blazing trails as they meet their end on targets painted in the blood of the Resistance. Cassian muffles a whimper, digging deeper into his blanket as if to shrink away.

> _If it doesn't concern you don't stand up - but today I stand and I say no!_

There is no fighting, no resistance now. There is no room for scathing words and heated proclamations, for fire burns you as much as it burns _within_.  There is no room for dignity when fire rains down on their heads. It cuts through layers of snow and ice, bubbles on skin – if you are lucky.

In war, nobody is lucky.

You run and hide and run and hide and hope and pray your legs are fast enough, your body is small enough.

 _When will it end?_ The lyrics are stilted, broken by sobs, swallowed by shaky breaths.

> _If the new beginning is to come, I want it to be ours, today, right here - because I am fed up of waiting, loving a loveless world._

The sound of boots on creaking flooring cuts through the song.

Arms dusted with snow and tainted with the scent of singed air carry him to an unfamiliar ship. They’re chased by a roar of fire and smoke, the ship shuddering as it tries to escape into hyperspace. Soft yet livid murmurs waft in the air around him.

Cassian is numb, and the words bunch up around him, losing their meaning.

“The Imps blew up their own _factory._ ”

“Most of them didn’t make it.”

He is numb, yet everything _burns._

It hurts.

It hurts like it was his soul that was blown to pieces, fragments tossed across the cosmos like stardust: his existence stretching across infinities, past the breaking point. Snapping, recoiling, bursting.

It _hurts._

The ship leaps forward. The roar fades to a rumble, dwindles to a whisper, and then disappears into silence.

A bone-chilling silence. No shrieks of terror, moans of pain, bellows of grief. Absolutely nothing except for Cassian’s own ragged breathing.

He cries freely now, loud enough he can hear himself over the thunderous roar in his chest

“We chased the Imps away – they’re gone for now, I guess they didn’t think they’d need that many troops. But…”

“We were too late for this settlement.”

Cassian is a mess of tear stained cheeks, shaking shoulders, and a runny nose. He manages to salvage some dignity when he wipes his face with the arm of his sleeve at the sound of approaching footsteps, blinking away tears. When the face looms in his vision, his eyes and nose are still bright red, but he forces a deep breath through his mouth.

“You’re going to be okay,” the man says in Basic. “You’re safe.”

He knows that, because his body is all in one place and not shorn apart by detonators.  Cassian supposes he should say thank you, but he doesn’t feel very grateful.

“Are they all dead?” he asks instead, voice wavering. 

The man’s lips press into a hard line, and he looks away.

“A life saved makes it all worth it,” is his eventual reply.

Cassian doesn’t feel like it. Not when the life was his. Not his sweet, brave mother. Not the older, smarter, more useful rebels. Not the children trapped in their bedrooms. Nor the parents and the grandparents, not the sick and the elderly.

Even one life gone was too many.

Tía Maria, dead. Tío Metias. Dead. His cousins. Dead. Neighbours. Dead.

It _hurts_ , he realizes, more than mere flesh and bone can handle.

_They were too late._

He’s left alone to mourn, the burden of survival sinking on his shoulders.

“All they had were sticks and stones and stolen blasters. Some homemade explosives. Nothing that could stop anything like this.”

“What can we do with the boy? The other survivors can join us. We can... we can build a bigger Resistance. Live the life of nomads, of a people without a home. Do our best to keep the Imperials busy. But the boy? We have no way to take care of a eleven-year-old.”

Cassian pictures his life wasting away in an orphanage, or worse, on the unforgiving streets of a faraway planet. Unable to care, unable to fight, his only company the echoes of screams of terror ringing in his ears. Struggling to eat when there were so many other mouths to be fed.

>   _Listen to me: I want to be a flower, but if not, I will be a rifle._

He only realizes he’s spoken out loud until everyone’s eyes turn to him.

“I want to fight,” he says in Basic.

A young woman in a military issue jacket – not Imperial, not Mantooinian, but something else, with a starbird bursting to life on a shoulder patch – speaks up.

“We’ll take him.”

 

* * *

 “Cassian Andor. You saved my life once.” The man’s hands are heavily scarred and engulf Cassian’s in a warm, steady handshake. “I’m Loom Carplin, Travia’s Chief of Staff.”

“Former leader of the Mantooine Liberators. I remember.” Cassian’s voice softens as he recognizes the hand that he’s shaking as the arms that carried him to the Rebellion. “You saved my life. I think we’re even.”

They take their seats, joined by Travia in her hoverchair and Cata furiously taking notes on her datapad. A wave of emotions ripple through the base of his stomach. Despite the seemingly casual nature of their conversation, every step – or misstep - he takes today could radically alter the path of the fledgling Rebel Alliance. The Atrvis Resistance is one of the oldest resistance groups against the Empire, and without their financial and technical support the Alliance would suffer.

The ARG knows this very well. He sees it in the glint of Travia's dark eyes. 

Cassian reminds himself to loosen the tension in his shoulders. He keeps his eyes fixed on Carplin’s face as the other man says: “You saved my people at the age of ten, Andor.”

“Not enough of them, unfortunately. And I couldn’t save my own.”

Carplin sighs, leaning back into his chair. “Such is war. Small victories and great defeats. There’s a saying among our people. _One who defeats an army is a hero. One who saves a life is a god._ ” He pointedly watches Cassian, lips pressing together.

“What is the value of one life against the value of millions?” Travia breaks her silence. “These are the things we must consider as leaders of the resistance against the Empire. It’s imperative we make quick and calculated decisions in order to cut our losses. Some of them may leave us feeling guilty - which I’m sure you understand, Cassian,” she says, not looking in his direction but at the scribe, “but we must mourn and move on. It is the Festian way.”

_We do not fear Death on Fest. We accept it._

Cassian ducks his head, suddenly interested on the grain of the synthwood table. “Of course.” He clears his throat. “We must also consider the impact of our actions on the future.”

Travia offers him a terse smile. “I see you’re eager to begin. So, Cassian, what does the Rebel Alliance want from us?”

“Your continued support of our cause is all that we ask for,” Cassian says, clasping his hands together. “The creation of this contract is mostly a formality. We, that is, the Atrivis Resistance and the Rebel Alliance, will agree to share information and lend material support when the need for large-scale missions arises. I believe these won’t occur in the foreseeable future.”

“What will the Rebellion provide for us in return?” Travia asks. He looks up at her thoughtfully.

“The same as which we expect of you. Information and support.” He tampers his voice down, keeping it from raising into a question. Travia was expecting something more, clearly. Why the change of heart? Or had she just decided it was now appropriate to ask? Cassian leans forward in his seat, toes of his boots brushing against the floor.

What did she want?

The answer comes a heartbeat later. “Can you reassure us that this will always be the case?”

“Of course,” Cassian replies immediately but not without a slight frown.

“Take your time and _think_ about it, Cassian. Will the Rebel Alliance continue their support of the Atrivis Resistance indefinitely? Will a group of predominantly Core Worlders have the interests of the Outer Rim at heart? I believe one day – hopefully in our lifetime – the Empire will fall. When a new government rises, will it just be a replica of the Republic? Or will they rectify their predecessor’s mistakes? Will they leave us to suffer at the sidelines, neglected and forgotten, once _their_ problems are solved and _their_ bellies are full?”

Cassian’s lips part but a reply doesn’t materialize.

He knows her concerns aren’t far-fetched.

“Can you assure me that tomorrow will be better than yesterday?” she asks. "Some of the systems and groups within the Alliance were very well off in the times of the Republic. You know how Fest was, even before the Clone Wars."

He feels three pairs of eyes fixed on his face, waiting for a tic to give his thoughts away. 

“I have hope,” he says carefully in Festian. “Our rebellion is built on hope, after all.” 

Travia’s mouth twitches up slightly in an imitation of a smile, sending a wave rippling through her perfectly straight hair.

“You can give me a full answer tomorrow.”

Cassian resigns himself to the apparent failure of the day’s work, but Carplin speaks up.

“What do you know about phrik, Cassian?” he asks.

Cassian straightens up in his seat. “It’s a supermetal,” he replies. “Found in abundance on Fest. The Empire uses it for high-tech armour.” He looks at Carplin curiously. “That’s it, isn’t it? The mines and refineries here were established by the Confederacy, and then the Empire took over when the Emperor rose to power and killed all the Separatist leadership.” He doesn’t elaborate about the devastation the factories caused – it never left their thoughts. “The Empire didn’t bother to rectify any issues with the mining process. Their entire focus was on faster production.”

Carplin walks around the table and sets his hands on a chair, leaning forward. Travia watches him closely. “I shouldn’t be preaching to two Festians about phrik, you’ve felt the devastating effects of the factories firsthand. But there’s been a recent development.”

Cassian’s leans forward, resting his forearms on the table.  

“Back in the days of the Jedi there was a rumor that even lightsabers couldn’t cut through phrik. It’s practically indestructible, very malleable, and unfathomably lightweight: the perfect metal.” Carplin sighs. “It’s also so rare and so valuable even the Empire uses it sparingly. They use it for battle armour and high-tech weaponry. But…”

Cassian waits.

“There’s been a conspicuous increase in the amount of activity at the surface. More troops, more slaves are landing every day _–_ all coming to work at the factories. Higher security, longer work hours…” Carplin straightens up. “It may no longer be safe for the ARG to hang in Festian airspace. Especially with a captive on board.”

“What are you proposing?” Cassian’s eyes narrow. “What does this mean?”

“They’re building something big.”

Cassian furrows his eyebrows. “I thought phrik was too valuable to use for construction, especially on a large scale.”

“Exactly.”

“So…” Cassian’s teeth press into his lower lip. “You believe the Empire is building something unprecedented.”

“Something that needs high quality material, in large quantities, all treated with top-tier security.”

“We need to know what that is,” Travia says. “And we know someone who can help us.”

Cassian’s gaze rises to meet hers and she nods slowly.

Trepidation settles in his gut.

* * *

Human blood is always red, regardless if it came from innocents or wrongdoers. Cassian learned this very quickly: the same red smeared plates of plastoid armour on the outside _and_ inside.

It’s what Cassian’s reminded of as he gazes upon Soryn, cuffed and bound to a chair with the best the ARG could provide. His head lolls to one side, still recovering from Kay’s well-aimed hit...

… and quite possibly something else.

He frowns. Clearly somewhere between getting off the shuttle and imprisonment, Soryn’s face had met the back of someone’s hand. Very forcefully.

Part of him wishes it was his.

But Cassian is no sadist. It’s a refrain he repeats over and over again.

_This is not revenge._

_This is for the cause._

_You are not your mother’s son; you are a tool of the Rebellion._

_You cut not for satisfaction; but for purpose._

A well-aimed slap draws blood just as well as a needle, and unlike the Empire, Cassian knows when the line is crossed.

“What is the Empire using phrik for? Why do they need so much of it?”

Soryn’s eyes flicker to his face and, groaning, he turns his head to follow.

Then he sputters out a laugh.

“If you think smacking me once will loosen my tongue, you’re mistaken,” he seethes. “Imperials are masters of interrogation. If you’ve made it as high up I have it’ll take more to break me, and-” he waits, a cynical smile widening on his face, “I know you _rebels_ are too _valiant_ to try.”  

Cassian remembers the pricks lining Esper’s forearms, the chafing on her wrists, the dark bruises peeking between the hems of her funeral clothing: minute details he hadn’t understood, things that were quickly covered up from prying eyes.

He remembers, he _understands,_ and swallows the poison bubbling up the back of his throat. His fingers curl into a fist pressed to his side and he’s tempted to lean into Soryn’s leering face.

Instead, he straightens his back and crosses his arms, studying Soryn’s smug expression.

“I am well versed in your techniques, more than you might expect,” he says quietly, and doesn’t miss the fleeting shadow of pure fear flitting across Soryn’s expression. “But, as you put it, I am _valiant_ enough not to put those skills to work… yet,” he enunciates. “I will give you time to weigh your options."

_I need time to prepare._

“You can give me a full answer tomorrow.”

Cassian turns away before he can see the Colonel’s reaction. The compartment door slides shut behind him with a click as he walks away as quickly as Cassian's feet can carry him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes!  
> 1) The lyrics in blockquotes are from the song _Canción Por La Flor y El Fusil_ which was so graciously translated for me by the actual angel @dasakuryo. I picture this as something resembling the Festian Resistance's anthem, a call to action (especially with Jeron's ideals of nonviolence conflicting with the Empire's oppression)  
>  2) Loom's line "One who defeats an army is a hero. One who saves a life is a god.” is translated from the movie Baahubali. I think it fits his outset really well.
> 
> Also, I have a feeling that the next chapter may be delayed ~~by planning~~ but a few comments in the box may help speed that process up :)


	9. Voices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They silently chip away at his resolve, and in the dim light of stars he desperately tries to put the pieces back together."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Incorporating some real life Festian - er, High Alderaanian, well, _Spanish_ for us Earth-dwellers - for a change! If you're on desktop, hover over the dialogue to see the English translation. Biiiig thank you to @dasakuryo for translating for me, where would this chapter be without your help!

He is eleven.

Maybe twelve.

The Festian calendar, burnt to cinders by the Imperial occupation, can no longer provide an answer.

Cassian sits uncomfortably, clasping and unclasping his hands as he waits. He’d been told to _wait for a moment_ by the mysterious woman who brought him here.

Wherever _here_ is.

Moments stretch into minutes, minutes give way to hours.

He’s enveloped by a cacophony of voices.

Rapid chatter between pilots, their helmets casually dangling by their fingertips. The near-deafening roar of engines as ships take off. Hydrospanners clattering to the ground, accompanied by expletives in languages he’d never heard. Stern looking uniformed soldiers of all genders rushing about, paths winding through groups of workers loading large cargo boxes off models of ships he didn’t know existed. Aliens of all shapes, colours, and sizes, nodding at each other with a sense of unified camaraderie.

All unfamiliar. It overwhelms him. It’s scary, even, but he hopes once he understands it won’t always be that way.

 _I’ll grow to love it,_ Cassian thinks.

He’s freed from his thoughts when he feels a presence at his side.

“Hello,” a voice says in Basic. He rises immediately, looking up to a human woman dressed in an all-white gown that sweeps the floor as she moves to stand in front of him.

“Hello,” Cassian replies quietly, at once excited, scared and terribly shy – hyperaware of the way Basic cuts his tongue.

“I’m Mon Mothma, Senator of Chandrila. I’m the unofficial head of operations here.” She smiles down at him. “What’s your name?”

Cassian straightens his posture. _I am Cassian, son of Jeronimo and Esperanza of family Andor._

“My name is Cassian,” he answers in hesitant Basic. “Cassian Andor.”

The Senator peers at the child thoughtfully. “Andor, you say? Any relation to Jeron Andor?” 

He tilts his head. “He was my father.” The word _was_ catches in his throat, but he manages to smile at her. “Did you know him?”

Mon exhales slowly, and Cassian notices her hand tightening around the back of his empty chair. She seems to age immediately, the kind warmth of her aura paling as the lines on her face grow more prominent. “I knew of him. I was lucky to meet him once. It wasn’t for very long, but it was enough to know he was a good man.” 

“I know,” Cassian replies. “That’s why he died.”

With experience, he’ll realize the expression on Mon’s face was not one of grief, nor pity - the dim sadness in her eyes is of understanding and resigned guilt.

 _I’m sorry for what we have done to you, and children like you,_ she thinks. But condolences are only for the benefit of those who give them, so she merely rests a hand on his shoulder –

“Come with me. I have some people I need to introduce you to. Hopefully, you will find something here that will help you cope with what you have lost.”

* * *

The first time it happens, he’s alone.

A hushed conversation in the background, a snarl that could easily be mistaken for the hiss of machinery:

“-he’s a _Separatist_ -”

Soon followed by a muttered warning: “Don’t be so loud, he’ll hear you!”

A snappy retort: “I don’t care. It’s the truth.”

Cassian hears the entire exchange but the meaning of it is lost on him until later that day. He’s watching a salvaged Republic ship undergo modifications, the star-like emblem in the process of being painted over in favour of anonymity.

 _Oh_.

He doesn’t know how to feel. The realization is cold and empty like everything felt after leaving Fest. The Rebellion wasn’t a home, not yet, but he found solace in the plethora of faces around him. All of them had suffered and lost like he had. They _understand._

At least, he thought they did.

* * *

The second time it’s his own fault. An overly dismissive and inaccurate ramble about the glorious era of the Republic doesn’t sit well with him, so of course – of _course_ – Cassian can’t hold back his tongue.

“Not all of us would agree.”

It’s a soft and earnest suggestion to reconsider their stance but Cassian is met with looks of appalled suspicion: the air goes still and he shrinks back in his seat.

_I shouldn’t have said that._

He’s right, he knows he’s right, he’s only eleven (he feels so much older) and even _he_ knows the Republic had failed in so, so many ways. He figures these sympathisers are Core Worlders who thrived in the Republic’s golden splendour, instead of withering in its cruel, cold, shadow.

He hoped that with the rise of the Empire they would understand. That the shadow hadn’t simply appeared out of nowhere, but had been slowly creeping its way in from the Outer Rim.

Apparently, some were still blind.

He can’t fight for justice right now, for tension hangs so thickly in the air he could slice it with a vibroblade.

( _He doesn’t even fight for us.)_

It’s a pilot that saves him - he later finds out she hails from a lush Outer Rim planet stripped bare by the Empire – quickly changing the topic to a new shipment of salvaged starfighters.

( _He’s a child. Let him be.)_

Cassian closes off after that, but the voices still find their way to him through the cracks. They silently chip away at his resolve, and in the dim light of stars he desperately tries to put the pieces back together.

* * *

Cassian sits alone, a neglected cup of caffeinated (he hopes) liquid steaming between his palms. Lost in thought, he doesn’t recognize the hum of repulsors in the air until Travia calls his name.

He turns to her just as she moves into the space beside his seat.

“It’s rather late for caf, isn’t it?” she asks softly.

“You’ve left me quite the question to answer,” Cassian says with a touch of a smile.

She doesn’t smile back. “I’m afraid I have another proposition for you.”

Wary, but curious, he makes a show of relaxing against his chair and nods at Travia.

“This one is personal, so I want you to truly consider my request before replying. Take your time.”

Cassian bites his lower lip.

Her gaze flits between Cassian’s face and his hands, resting on the cup in his grip. “Both yours and your parents’ services to the Resistance are commendable. It would not be an exaggeration to say that without the three of you, there would be no organized resistance to the Empire at _all_ in the entire sector.”

She waits for a reaction, and, only finding Cassian’s impassive face, she continues. “The Rebellion has you in Intelligence - as a spy, for lack of a better term - correct?”

He nods hesitantly.

“The Atrivis Resistance has a better use for you,” Travia says, and watches Cassian’s grip tighten on the cup. “We’d like you to join us. _Stay_ with us.”

The cup squeaks as it bumps on the table. “And leave the Rebel Alliance behind?”

Travia continues as if she hadn’t heard his question. “You may continue your work as a liaison between the ARG and the Rebel Alliance. To put an end to that would be idiotic.” She waves a hand. “I feel the Alliance is not using you to your full capability. You brought the Festian Resistance and the Liberators together at ten years of age, and a decade later you’re still doing the same work. You’re capable of more, Cassian, and I hope you realize that.”

Cassian raises the cup to his lips only to realize its contents have gone cold. Undeterred, he downs a mouthful before asking: “What do you have in mind?”

“After ten years of spying for the Alliance, you have priceless knowledge, connections, and experience, We need that – we need _you_. Your people need you, your _homeworld_ needs you.” She gazes at him intently before adding: “With your skills, we can establish connections with other fringe rebel groups that are hesitant to join the Core-centric Alliance, thereby strengthening the resistance in this area and, potentially, in the entire Outer Rim. Uniting the Outer Rim worlds under one banner was something even the Republic was unable to do! You can become the face of the resistance against the Empire!”

Cassian nods slowly, the meanings of what hadn’t been said unravelling in his mind.

_We will not integrate ourselves with the Rebel Alliance._

_We want our own Resistance against the Empire._

_We want you to leave the Alliance._

_We want you to join us._

He drains the mug of its contents.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, and Travia gives him a thin-lipped smile before leaving him alone with his thoughts for the night.

In the tug of war of loyalties between Fest and the Alliance, Cassian’s conscious threatens to snap.

* * *

**5 AFE**

Cassian stops abruptly in the middle of the corridor.

Other rebels push past him, but he stands stock-still, gripping his datapad: a lone boulder in rushing rapids.

"…cielo, no deberías haberlo dicho así-"

The two voices sound distinct from the usual mutterings and exclamations on the base. Cassian discerns the voice of an older man and a young girl – unusually young, her voice vibrantly chipper and enthused.

"¡Pero papá-"

It wasn’t the startling youth of her voice that gave Cassian pause, however.

"Cielito, por favor..."

They’re familiar words articulated in an unfamiliar rhythm, but _familiar_ nonetheless:

it is Festian.

(Perhaps after a year of disuse, it is Cassian who has forgotten the tune.)

He lingers in the hallway for as long as he can, in hopes of catching a glimpse of whoever was speaking. But he’s whisked away by the crowd, away from a slowly fading past and ushered into an uncertain future.

* * *

“And now, Senator Bail Organa, here today with his daughter Princess Leia of Alderaan. Senator, you have something to tell us?”

“Thank you Senator-”

Cassian’s head jerks up.

Despite the different language, he recognizes the voice.

Cassian’s eye flit to the Senator of Alderaan, and then drop to little girl at his side who couldn’t possibly be more than five years old. She just barely manages to peer over the edge of the table to look around the room with wide brown eyes which eventually meet his own.

“-I believe even the youngest of us, especially those who come from a place of privilege like ourselves – being monarchs and Core Worlders – should be educated as soon as they are capable. This is why I brought Leia with me today-”

Cassian gives the little princess a small smile.

She smiles back.

* * *

Cassian knows he is needed elsewhere, but the little thrum of hope fluttering in his chest keeps him locked in place. He waits, nervously shifting his weight between his feet.

The Senator and his entourage sweep past him, a flurry of fabrics and the rhythmic drum of boots. Cassian worries his lip, straightening his posture, hoping to meet–

The Princess, dallying along daintily with one hand in her father’s tight grip, turns to look curiously at him. Recognition sparkles in her eyes and she waves at him with her free hand. The motion catches her father’s attention.

This is it.

Cassian clears his throat.

"Buenos días, senador," he says, heat prickling the back his neck. _Was his Festian too rough? Had he forgotten it all?_

Surprise riddles the Senator’s face and Cassian swallows nervously, hands fidgeting behind his back.

" Acércate. "

Cassian slowly walks up to him, anticipation bubbling up his abdomen. Bail motions for the rest of his entourage to board the ship, gently nudging his daughter ahead.

"¿Cómo te llamas?"

“Cassian,” he takes a deep breath. “Cassian Andor, sir.”

"¿De dónde vienes?"

“Fest, sir.” He leans forward, an unidentifiable tightness in his chest, his entire existence hinging on the Senator’s impeding reaction.

Bail frowns, and Cassian can feel his heart sink.

“Fest…. I’ve never heard of it,” he replies in Basic. His tumbling heart shatters, pieces skittering across the duracrete floors and sliding under the slowly warming engines of the ship.

“Oh-well, um, it’s an Outer Rim planet, sir,” he lamely offers, knowing his attempts at rekindling his hopes are futile.

Bail shakes his head. “That’s... not an excuse,” he says softly, “you were speaking, well, not quite High Alderaanian, like with some archaic accent… but not quite… It’s very similar, if not the same.”

Cassian watches him closely, tempted to pick up the pieces.

“What are you doing here?” Bail asks, suddenly. “This is no place for children.” 

 “I…” Cassian voice falters. _My people were wiped out by Imperials? The ones who were left couldn’t support me? I had no choice?_

He realizes he’s blinking owlishly at an Imperial Senator like a fool, and musters up a response:

“I want to fight, sir. To end the Emperor’s cruel regime.”

“Do you, really?” Bail asks, and something like scorn drips from his tone.

He balks. “Pardon?”

“Do you really _want_ to _fight_?” he stresses.

The insinuated meaning unfolds in Cassian’s mind.

 _Did he want to fight? Did he want to kill?_ Blood stained shards of glass spill across snow, and his hands are red from the cold. Cassian looks up and notices Bail looking at him with narrowed eyes.

“N-not to _fight_ sir. I want to _end_ this all. By whatever means necessary.”

He hopes this is the right answer. It feels right.

Bail’s expression softens into a smile.

"Ven aquí, muchachito, tengo algo que decirte."

The endearment surprises him – Bail’s accent is so _different_ \-  but Cassian leans in closer. Bail crouches down and sets his hands on his shoulders.

“Why don’t you come with me for a while? I can arrange it – the Rebellion won’t miss a single pair of hands, and I’ll show you how _I_ fight. With words and subversion, instead of blasters and assassinations.” Bail juts his head down towards him, as if imparting the universe’s greatest secret:

“Will that interest you, Cassian?”

“Yes, sir. I would – I would be honored.”

Bail smiles at him.

"No hace falta, olvídate de los títulos. Tampoco es necesario que hablemos en Básico, ¿no crees? Soy de Alderaan, eres Festiano... Creo que es más cómodo para ambos hablar en la lengua que compartimos, ¿no es así?"

For the first time he can remember, Cassian grins so broadly his cheeks ache.

For the first time he can remember, he feels the prospect of a bright new future awaiting him.

* * *

When the door to Soryn’s cell opens, Cassian is once again greeted by a glaringly red mark on the captive’s face. Wanting to catch the culprit, he steps backwards, snagging the door by his heel, and leans back into the hallway.

It’s empty, save for the young boy guarding the cell – an unnecessary precaution for the illusion of security. Cassian frowns. He takes another step backwards, letting the door slide shut in front of him.

The boy quickly averts his gaze.

“Can we talk?” Cassian gently reassures the boy in Festian: “I promise you won’t get in trouble for this.”

His query is met with wide eyes. Cassian can’t help but notice the slightness of the boy’s frame and the way he unsteadily rocks on his feet.

He feels like he’s seeing a past version of himself.  

“I…” the boy starts. “I’m sorry. I was the one who hit him.”

“Why?”

The boy’s eyes cast downwards to his feet. “He… he’s here, _alive…_ it makes me angry.”

“Because he’s an Imperial?” Cassian watches the toes of the boy’s boots drag across the tile floors, tracing the outline of some unseen memory.

“I mean… _yes_ …. But.” He swallows, wetting his lips. “He killed my mother.” The boy stares up at Cassian with a newfound steadiness. “He killed my mother. He needs to _die._ ”

Cassian’s lips curl into neither a smile nor a frown, face twisted by the recognition of the fire in the boy’s eyes at odds with the confusion manifesting in the restlessness of his feet.

“He killed mine too,” Cassian replies softly.

The boy inhales sharply.

“Will you avenge them? Will he pay for what he’s done?” The questions spring forward ruthlessly, emboldened by their shared horrors.

The vision of blood on freshly fallen snow materializes under Cassian’s eyelids, the hazy image of his mother’s faced sharpened into focus by the ever-present weight in his pocket.

He lets out a breath slowly, shoving his hands into his pockets and rubbing his fingers against the holoprojector.

_Will you avenge me?_

Cassian desperately wants to say yes. But the price of freedom is greater than any one person, even if that person is his own mother.

He looks at the boy again – realizes he hadn’t asked for his name –  and tries to come up with a decent answer. Cassian glances at his own hands, callused from the life of a child soldier and sniper, and then looks at the boy’s, curling and uncurling into fists.

He remembers his first kill, vaguely recalls the second, barely remembers the most recent. But he never forgets how their deaths feel – the scars they leave are permanent.

_Revenge only seems satisfying. But death is a stain on both the hands and the mind._

“I’ll do my best.” Cassian replies after the long silence, and the boy frowns. “This isn’t something you should be worrying about. Make your mother proud.” He steps closer, and takes the boy’s hands in his. “The best revenge is defeating the Empire so nobody else loses their parents, okay?”

The boy hesitates, looking down at his fists in Cassian’s palms. Then, he nods slowly, unfurling his fingers and looking up.

“Okay.”

 Cassian curls his lips into a forced smile, and the boy gives him a shaky grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this was worth the wait! Some language tidbits:  
> Bail calls Leia "sky" and later "little sky", which, when I was suggested a bunch of endearments (thanks again Ai!) I immediately honed in on this one because Leia *is* the little Skywalker! T__T  
> Diego being Mexican and Jimmy being Puerto Rican gave rise to this, so of course Cass thinks his accent is a little weird. Also Bail think's Cassian's accent is a little 'archaic' since Fest is so isolated. (I imagine that centuries or maybe millennia ago, they had a common language branch, and Fest has the more 'preserved' accent while High Alderaanian has a wider vocabulary.)  
> I hope you caught the reference to _freedom fighting._! if not, please check it out ^_^


	10. Luxury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luxury (noun.):
> 
>   * to (not) choose
>   * to (not) act
>   * to (not) fight
> 


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw in end notes

**~7 AFE**

Cassian can make an endless list of all the things he’s learned during his time with the Alderaanian Senator.

He knows his way around the finest, most illustrious galas and the stealthiest, most critical of tongues. He can dress to impress, unforgettable like words etched on stone; and can blend seamlessly into the shadows, a fleeting existence like fingerprints on water.

He learns the inner machinations of the Imperial machine. He knows how to talk like them, to stand like them, to dress like them, to breathe like them.

To think like them - even though the mere prospect of assuming an Imperial personality sends shivers down his spine.

He runs circles around targets, ensnaring them with a lasso of words a dizzying trap, tricking them into yielding to his every behest. He drops accents and forms new ones, an untraceable identity in a sea of faces.

He is what they expect: an unassuming aide, an amiable young man, a ghostly shadow that clings to the Senator’s coattails.

He is what they never expect: a cunning orator, one of the sharpest of Bail’s weapons against the Empire.

He is, at once all of these, and none.

Cassian works his jaw and stretches his aching muscles, feet sore from a night of standing. He rinses his mouth of fine Alderaanian wine, picks away at the glitter dusting his cheeks. He scrubs the glitz and glamour away like dirt, rubbing all the way to his very conscience.

He is another seat at the dining table of House Organa, another victim for Leia’s rambunctious chatter. A set of helpful hands for the maids, and a willing ear for the cooks, He is Bail’s protégé, the rough outlines of a masterpiece his daughter might grow to fill -

but _Force_ forbid she ever loses her parents, her culture, her home - everything _-_ like Cassian has.

She won’t, not as long as Bail lives.

Even under all those burdens, Cassian’s eyes still glitter with life. Bail looks at him and feels a smidge of pride - accompanied by an undercurrent of regret.

_What were his own motives? Why was he teaching him all this – was the boy truly better off here, dangling in front of his oppressors like a trinket, than with the other Rebels?_

Cassian was learning how to protect himself, but he is also learning another way to fight.

Bail is shaping the child into a weapon. Just as much as the Festians and the Rebellion had.

And, possibly, instead of just his deft hands and quick feet, Cassian’s own sense of _self_ is being whittled down with it. The boy flits through roles with ease, shrugging on personalities like clothing. He’s perfected the technique – so much so, Bail is worried.

His masterpiece is stained by guilt.

“Cassian,” he asks, one day. “Are you happy here?”

Bail watches the boy move around the room, eyes fixed to his back. When Cassian straightens up and turns to face him, he realizes the boy would soon grow taller than his shoulders _. He might even surpass me,_ he muses amusedly.

“Of course,” he replies. “You have given me everything. More than anything I could imagine.”

 _Have I?_ Bail thinks. He shakes his head.

“I denied you the life of a child, muchachito. I have failed you.”

Cassian glances up at him, bright eyes peering through a mess of hair. They carry a surprising depth, a wisdom far beyond his years.

“I was never really a child. I never had the chance.”

When Bail looks crestfallen, he continues: “It’s not your fault. It’s the Emperor’s. And he will pay for all the childhoods he has taken, mine included. We will _make_ him pay.”

“With what currency?” Bail asks, and he is afraid of the answer.

So is Cassian. “Justice, when long overdue, asks for blood,” he murmurs, the realization flickering in his eyes. “And we must ask for it.”

Bail gazes at the boy, barely into the embrace of the teen years, and repeats the question once more:

“Do you want to fight?”

Cassian raises his eyes to meet the Senator’s gaze. Subversion is slow, like a river carving through bedrock. It is a useful tool, _but it is not enough._

“I don’t _want_ to fight,” he says quietly. “I _need_ to. It’s our only hope.”

Bail sighs deeply, with regret and resignation etching themselves in the creases of his frown.

“Okay.”

* * *

Cassian lies flat on his bunk, the afterimage of the unfamiliar ceiling lingering under his eyelids. It is dread, not caffeine, that courses through his veins; keeping him up long after the ship’s crew had fallen asleep.  

He rolls to his side and dangles his left arm over the edge of the bunk.

“You should get to sleep, Cassian. A twenty-year-old human male requires-”

“Kay,” Cassian rakes his palm across his face. “I thought you were powered down.”

“I did not deem it necessary. I have been sitting in this room charging all day. If I charge any longer there is an 85% change my batteries will burst. In fact, this entire mission has been so unstimulating, save for capturing that Colonel, that I have spent the last few hours calculating the probabilities of various scenarios that will result in our deaths on this mission. For example, if you do not get at least five hours of sleep tonight, the likeliness of our early demise increases by five percent.”

“Uh, Kay? That’s a bit… morbid.” Concern laces his tone but Cassian is thankful for the reprieve from his thoughts.

“It’s not my fault. You did not give me anything fun to do.”

“Have you checked the secur--“

“Done. A long time ago, actually.” Kay pauses, optical lights dimming. "It's not up to par with Alliance standards, but good enough." 

Cassian sits up, propping up his back with a pillow. Kay watches him do so, then adds:

"I believe you are considering the potential repercussions of actions you are going to take. Which, if you are, is ridiculous and a waste of your time as _I am right here_. Or did you forget tactical analysis is one of my main functions?”

“Sorry Kay. I was just wondering… it’s the Colonel. They want me to interrogate him.”

He tosses off the blanket and it rumples around his legs.

An endless stream of reports spring up in his vision, all outlining the suffering of prisoners at the hands of the Empire. Both first and second hand: some of them his, quickly jotted down after the victim was no longer alive – or lucid enough – to recount the story.

Kay’s motors whirring fills the silence as he recalls the contents of those reports.

Stories of sleep deprivation, of interrogator droids, of electric probes – stories of things Cassian didn’t have with him, didn’t have the temptation to find. Tales of carefully aimed blasters and vibroblades used with precision, of wirecutters and cloth soaked in fuel siphoned off tanks, all rendered in excruciating detail. _For the safety of Rebel agents,_ Cassian thinks, but part of him knows now it’s yet another tool in his arsenal.

One he doesn’t ever want to use. 

“Do you think you’re going to hurt him intentionally for your own satisfaction?” Kay asks. “I believe the probability of that is negligible but if you believe you might the probability goes up.”

“I don’t….” Cassian flexes his fingers. “I trust that I won’t. But I know he won’t give up anything very easily. You can only pull so many tricks with words.” He bites his lip. “But I will do my best.” He scoffs once, sardonically. “With my _experience_.” 

“That sounds like a solution to me,” Kay says. “But I sense high levels of agitation in your tone as well as increased tension in your posture. What is the matter?”

He leans back, head bumping against the wall. “I’m scared my judgement is clouded. That I’ll get mixed up between information and revenge.”

Kay cocks his head. “You aren’t the type to get emotionally involved, Cassian. That is, you won’t kill because you want to, you’ll kill because you deem it necessary.”

“I know,” Casisan says. “But this case… I’m scared I’m going to do something I can’t come back from.”

“Why?” 

“He killed my mother, Kay, right in front of my own eyes. Here, where I can’t see him, I can think of the questions I will ask and how to ask them. I _know_ when to pull away. But seeing him in person… I’m scared I might slip up. I might take things too far.” He looks away, to the crack of light coming in under the door.

“If I hurt him, won’t that make us no different from them?”

Kay tilts his head. “His actions were impersonal for the most part – out of greed, or a desire to be intimidating, but his reasoning was that it was in the name of the Empire. Likewise, whatever decision you take will be for the Rebellion. Based on my knowledge of your behaviour, I know this to be to true.”

For a moment, all Cassian can hear is the sound of his own unsteady breathing.

“From a purely logical standpoint, whatever you do in the name of the Rebel Alliance will be more… morally sound than anything anyone does for the Empire. I know that now, not because of the reprogramming, but because it is logical. I know you, Cassian, and I know that the probability of you _slipping up_ is so low it would be a waste of time to consider. Whatever the outcome, you will be able to defend your decisions. And if you need me to do the same, I will.”

“Thank you, Kay.”

He shuffles under the sheets, pulling the blanket back over his shoulders.

“It’s my duty, Cassian.”

Cassian cracks an eye open and peers at the droid.

“You’re a good friend too, Kay.”

He settles back into the pillow, watching the lights on Kay’s frame shift from blue to yellow.

* * *

**~7 AFE**

He sits on a crate, eyes fixed on his gloves. He doesn’t bother taking them off.

The ship groans under the strain of hyperspace, but Cassian hears none of it. His skin and clothes are still damp from the mist that blanketed the entire planet – which now shrinks away to a pinprick in their viewport, along with the man he’d abandoned.

The rumbles of conversation leak through the cockpit.

The loss of a Pathfinder hurts the entire team.

It hurts Cassian in a way unlike the others. He clenches his fist, the feeling of the hand being yanked away from his grip refusing to fade.

_“Go,” he hisses._

_“I can’t lea-”_

_“You have to. Get out of here.”_

Cassian works his jaw. He remembers the last glimpse – the glint of cuffs in foggy grey air.

Guilt makes his heart lurch.

Capture means discovery. Discovery means interrogation, which was just another name for torture.

A hand lands on his shoulder. Reassuring not in the action itself, but the precise ocation. A gentle mutter of _he knows what to do_ as the weight lifts, and Melshi walks away.

The pill in the pocket on his shoulder burns.

Cassian sucks in a shaky breath and nods. He swipes at his face with a sleeve. _What could he have said? What could he have done?_

Nothing, and yet-

_Our bodies for the Force and our lives for the Cause!_

He pushes the memory away, back into the fog.

A young voice – but older and meaner than Cassian’s -  jeers: “He’s a Separatist, what if he-”

Grief sticks to the sides of throat, anger makes it hard to swallow. Cassian tenses, and the rhythmic sound of Melshi’s footsteps ceases.

“Not on my command, you don’t-“

“He will _die._ ”

“Better death than capture.”

Cassian realizes, later, after he’d been shifted to Draven’s division, that Melshi hadn’t completely defended him.

* * *

**9 AFE**

Then there’s the girl on Jenoport, dragged away in cuffs.

The _Festian_ girl on Jenoport.

The way she looked at him, the drawn-out stare as her feet dragged along in the dust. _End it. Better death than capture. I saved you, now you save me._

His finger hovering over the trigger. Held back by the pair of dark eyes, so alike his mother’s.

The thud of doors slamming, the rumble of an engine.

 _Too late, too late_.

Guilt and a missing informant keep him on-planet. A dull ache – _vengeance_ – pushes him forward. He treads more carefully this time, weaving his way in and out of the circles of gangs and Imperials, carefully avoiding the group that had cast him out for dead in the first place.

The need for vengeance makes him crueller than normal, and he pushes a girl – boy? - the memory is fuzzy: he can only remember his mouth on someone else’s, pinning them to a wall, his hand slipping into a pocket to fish out a datacard.

Just another target.

He will never be able to wash the bitter taste out of his mouth.

He remembers the girl from Jenoport, a week later.

His informant drawn out of hiding and the girl who saved his life located.

Alive, but barely.

Alive, but it was the only thing she was.

_You killed me, Cassian Andor._

_At least, you should have._

Cassian never makes the same mistake twice.

The blaster goes off, and she is free.

He, however, is thrown into his own personal prison.

When Draven asks him about the drawn-out mission, he informs him of the lost cover and the informant gone missing. When he asks about the discharged blaster, Cassian tells him about a narrow escape.

Kay knows the truth – Cassian never meant it to be that way, but the tear tracks on his face gave him away.

* * *

Cassian is startled awake by alarms blaring and people shouting.

“I do believe we have a problem,” Kay says, alerted by Cassian rolling out of bed. He shoves his blaster in his waistband and glances up at the droid. “Do you need me to accompany you?”

“No, that’s fine Kay, Thank you.” He rubs the sleepiness out of his eyes, then runs a hand through his hair. “Actually wait outside the room for me, just in case.”

When he unlocks the door he’s met with the bright white lights of the corridor.

“He’s escaping!”

Cassian mutters a curse under his breath. _Soryn, gone._

Where?

A map of the ship springs up in his mind.

_The escape pods._

But not the obvious route.

Cassian bolts down the corridor to Soryn’s holding cell.

The boy from earlier lies sprawled across the floor, blood trickling from a gash in his neck. He doesn’t stop running, noting the painful absence of the rise and fall of the nameless young soldier’s chest. He has no time to mourn, and only determination fills his mind as slips into a maintenance corridor.

Cobwebs latch onto his bedclothes and his breathing sends clouds of dust into the air.

He peers out into the new main corridor, lying in wait.

And then: rushed footsteps.

Not taking the time to reconsider, Cassian raises his blaster and fires.

 _Once, twice,_ the aim of an assassin.

Soryn cries out and falls to the ground, just shy of the first escape pod.

Emerging from his hiding spot, Cassian drops into a crouch beside Soryn’s still form and lifts the back of his head.

“Tell me what they’re building,” he hisses in Basic, leaning into Soryn’s face. “What are they using all that phrik for?”

The Imperial’s thigh is damp against his knee, smearing red all over the fabric.

His question is met with a blood-flecked sneer. Soryn reaches up and grabs a fistful of Cassian’s shirt, the worn sleepwear creasing in his grip.

Cassian leans in.

“It will be the most fearsome thing this galaxy has ever seen. You scum won’t have a _chance._ ” Soryn’s voice is more of a wheeze, and he coughs from the strain, sickly and wet.

Something registers in the back of Cassian’s mind. _Where did I shoot him?_

“What _is_ it?” he presses further. His furious determination morphs into terror as Soryn barks out a laugh that dissolves into coughs, spluttering as his head jerks.

“Good lu-luck,” he snarls in between thrashes, “findi-ing ou-”

The last of his death throes cumulate in a final shudder. His head lolls to the side, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

_Dead._

Cassian stares in blank disbelief – he hadn’t shot to kill, had he? Had his underlying need for vengeance caused his aim to venture astray?

_No – no._

The first ARG soldier to arrive witnesses a strange scene: Cassian, hunched over the body of his mother’s killer.

“Is he-” she starts in Festian.

Cassian lifts his eyes to meet her approaching figure. She halts, taken aback by his stricken expression.

He blinks once, twice, and then the familiar mask of indifference slips over his features.

“Dead? Yes. I’ll – you go inform the others. I can brief whoever needs to hear it.”

She nods and turns to leave.

Cassian is left alone on the cold floor, with blood on his hands and a cooling body at his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> potential triggers: implied torture, death.  
> ///  
> Only one chapter left with the epilogue! (also drop me a comment if you want me to post them as one update or split between two weeks)  
> I really liked the Jenoport backstory I originally explored in a Cassian week fic and just decided to refer to/expand it here as well!


	11. Rebirth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He is no saint."

The boy’s name was Rafael.

His parents hailed from another settlement on Fest, one far enough that Cassian didn’t recognize the family name. They had died trying to escape the factories, but after succeeding in sending their only child to relative safety.

He had no other living family.

This is what Cassian learns, far too late to make a difference.

Still, he stands, head bowed, as all the ship’s occupants gather in the mess hall to mourn. He aches for a bouquet of wishblooms, something he can stare at and clutch with his trembling hands. But the flowers blossom no longer – their native planet too polluted to sustain them, the ship too disconnected from the northern wind for them to grow.

Travia makes do with her impassioned speech. The words are dragged out of Cassian’s memory: the familiar anecdotes he heard every year, back when his focus was on running back inside to the warmth of his mother and a cup of coca.

This time, he listens.

This time, it all makes sense.

“Some of you may not remember the Remembrance Festival, too young to remember the black and white wishblooms. It was said that they were a gift of the northern wind, a representation of Existence itself. The white flowers represented Life, and the black represented Death.”

She lets her words sink in. “We do not fear Death on Fest, for Death is a natural part of Existence. Its inevitability makes Life sweeter, more poignant. It pushes us to strive to do the most for the good of the galaxy. We celebrate the Life of the fallen today, and remember what they died for - and so we continue to fight for their Cause.”

She stills, letting the mourners revel in the warm silence as her words linger in the air, then concludes: “Our bodies for the Force,” she pauses to look around the gathering and briefly meets Cassian’s eyes, “our lives for the Cause!”

The refrain reverberates around the room, sending an electric chill down Cassian’s spine.

* * *

He scrubs his hands in the tiny bathroom, numbly watching dried blood swirl down the drain. Kay studies him closely but for once says nothing.

Then Cassian collapses into the bed.

For once old memories do not nag him. Perhaps his unconscious is worn out from replaying scenes from his past like an old record player one might find in the ballrooms of the Courscanti elite. Perhaps the death of his mother’s killer has freed him from the demons that have haunted him since.

It’s more likely he’s merely exhausted.

Still, Cassian sleeps better than he has in weeks, and is only awoken by Cata knocking at his door, there to summon him for his debrief with Travia.

“Are you going to stay with us?” she asks, after he’d told her how Soryn had died.

He shakes his head. “After what has transpired here, I think I should go back to the Alliance. They need to know the Empire is building something out here, with large amounts of phrik. The Alliance has more resources and connections than the ARG. We’ll be able to find out what it is.” He stares pointedly at the cup of water set down in front of him. “With your help, of course.”

“You think we can trust the Alliance? After all that I’ve told you?”

Cassian nods and says what he’d been going over in his head: “The Atrivis Resistance Group -and the Outer Rim - benefits greatly if I stay with the Alliance. I will be able to serve as your voice in the Rebel Alliance, ensuring that as long as I am there, your needs will be considered.”

Travia remains impassive and the room is silent save for the quiet click of the Cata's fingers flitting over her datapad.

He takes a sip of water before continuing. “I promise, if I outlive the Empire, I will return to serve my homeworld.” It trickles down his throat and settles like ice in his stomach.

Travia’s lips twitch: a inadvertent flare of surprise. “That’s quite the promise, Cassian.”

“You have my word,” he says, “I promise on the northern winds.”

She leans back in her hover. “I’ll hold you at your word, then.” She frowns. “But you’re leaving now, correct?”

Cassian nods. “Your soldiers are fueling my ship, and Kaytoo is preparing for the flight.”

“Will I ever see you again?”

 _Unlikely._ Cassian had spent a lifetime on Fest and its ghosts had haunted him his entire life. Now. Soryn is dead along with his mother. His ghosts shrink away into the darkness, and he latches the hatch shut once more. All that remains is the Empire itself.

And hope. Always, hope.

_It is the last possession of the downtrodden._

“I hope so.” Cassian gives her a wry smile.

“But it is unlikely. Unless, as you say, the Empire falls in our lifetime.”

He nods, wondering why Travia was particularly curious. The lines around her mouth are more prominent, and her shoulders are drawn taut with tension.

“It’s… time I told you something,” Travia begins.

She glances at Cata, who quickly shuts off her datapad and gathers up her belongings. Cassian watches the door slide shut behind her.

He’s tired. The gravity of the past few days along with the long journey ahead weigh down on him, and judging by the uncharacteristic concern on Travia’s face she’s only about to add to his burden. His hand instinctively slips into his pocket.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I never told you.”

Cassian furrows his eyebrows.

“What do you mean?”

Her gaze softens, a little, and Cassian recognizes the expression of a much, much, younger Travia covertly glancing over at Metias during one of many secret resistance meetings.

_Oh._

“You…. married my tío Metias, didn’t you?” Cassian asks very quietly.

Travia blanches. “Wh-no, well,” she sighs. “We never had the chance. You must remember, he died in the Imperial attack on the factories.” She averts her eyes. “That… wasn’t what I was planning on telling you… but I gather you knowing this causes no harm.”

He watches her closely, unspoken words hanging in the air. Cassian recalls from his debrief that she never married.

“What was it that you were going to tell me?” he ventures, genuinely curious.

She sighs. “I was about to tell you something about your father.”

Something in him that had lain dormant for a decade splutters to life. His heart picks up in pace, thrumming against his ribcage. He can feel the heat rising in his cheeks and tries to kepe his expression blank but Travia’s eyes narrow slightly, with steely recognition.

“It is about your father’s death.”

He stifles a sigh and hunches forward, leaning against the table.

“What about it? He died on Carida, after a peaceful protest became a riot.” _What part of this statement is false?_

“Do you know who was responsible?”

The weight in his pocket seems to multiply in size, wanting to pull him down, out of his seat and through the floor of his ship. Into the cold embrace of space.

He shivers.

“The Republic. Their clones.”

She shakes her head slowly. Cassian frowns.

“The Confederacy.”

Some revelations are a slap to the face: sudden and stinging. Others creep like frostbite: slow and deadly. Cassian feels the treachery’s grip tighten around his neck, squeezing the air from his lungs.  

“How?” he chokes out. “He was the one who _brought_ them to Fest! He literally handed us _over_ to them!”

A mistake, he thinks, but one he can’t blame his father for. But this? He narrows his eyes. Travia says nothing.

His eyes drop to her hands: they shake as she tries to curl them into fists.

Suddenly, he is afraid of what she will say next.

“Me.”

He stares at her blankly. The blaster at his side waits patiently in its holster, and his free hand twitches while the other makes a fist around the holoprojector in his pocket.

Cassian doesn’t make a sound - only clenches his jaw and swallows back his anger to prompt her:

“Why?”

She turns the hover away from him, wordlessly indicating for Cassian to follow. He obliges.

“The biggest mistake Jeron made,” she begins as they head down the hallway, “was contacting the Republic a second time. I honestly don’t know what he saw in its faulty society. In hindsight, now knowing that the Republic and the Confederacy were both evil, I don’t think anything he could’ve done would have made a difference.”

Cassian barely glimpses Travia’s furtive glance towards him.

“Eventually the representatives of Confederacy caught word that he had reached out to some Republic Senators, and understandably they weren’t very happy. It was the middle of the Clone Wars, and here was a prominent figure in one of their beneficiary factions reaching out to the enemy!”

He focuses on the sound his boots make as he walks.

“I didn’t get an explanation of how or when, but they…. they trusted me enough. To do it neatly, and make sure that the hands of the CIS weren’t soiled.”

He focuses on his breathing: holding it in, letting it out slowly. Timing it to the beat of his footsteps.

“Now I realize I was blindly devoted to the Confederacy. Somehow your parents were the only people who could see right through them. But your father made the mistake of transferring his trust to the Republic.”

She turns to Cassian, hover swivelling with her. “I fear we’re making the same mistakes with the Rebellion.  When our fate is not in our hands, how can we trust that we are walking towards a better future?”

He stares at her, and the answer unfurl in his mind like a wishbloom.

“We hope,” he replies. “Rebellions are built on hope.”

Her eyes drop away from his gaze. She silently moves the hover forward, turning a corner.

It’s a while before she speaks again: “The protest on Carida was a perfect opportunity. We…. We brought some weapons onto our ship as a precaution, even though Jeron insisted that it was to be a peaceful demonstration. We convinced him we needed some defense, and we smuggled more than he thought we had…”

She sighs again, stopping in front of a glowing display. Cassian pays it no attention, working his jaw as he pointedly stares at his feet, rubbing the holo between his fingers.

“When the time was right, I covertly targeted some of the clones. The protest blew up into a riot and… I nudged… Jeron into the crossfire.”

Rage chokes the words out of his throat.

_You betrayed my father._

Even after all this, Cassian manages to be reasonable.

“But… you didn’t just kill my father. There were… so many other victims.”

“Do you remember what I said earlier?” She swivels to face him. “ _What is the value of one life, when weighed against the lives of millions_? On that day, I saw a handful of faces I knew well on one side, and millions of unseen faces on the other. All of Fest. The entire sector. The Outer Rim. The galaxy. Our independence, and the independence of so many other species. In my mind, it was a clear choice.” Travia studies him closely. “And I believe you’re not in any position to judge me.”   

 _I’ve never betrayed anyone, especially not for blind faith in a cause,_ Cassian wants to say, but he knows it’s a lie. He remains silent, his own dark secrets remained firmly locked in the past: the only ones privy to them still alive being himself and Draven.

When he looks to Travia, she doesn’t hide the fact she’d been looking at him. “Just because I think I made the right decision in that situation,” she says softly, “doesn’t mean I don’t regret it. And I will never forget it – I couldn’t forget, even if I wanted to.”

Cassian’s eyes drop to her prone body, her motionless legs on the hover.

“Did this happen… because of the Imperial attack?” he asks gently, reaching out as if he was stranded on thin ice.

She shakes her head. “No. This happened to me little by little. A sickness caused by the pollution, of course.” She presses her lips into a line, and then purses them into a small, cynical smile. “Do you know, I’m the only person who went to the Senate with your father – the first time – that is still alive?”

 _You killed the others_ , Cassian thinks sourly.

“I know what you’re thinking. I’m left alone to carry the guilt – as it should be. It is my own fault.”

Cassian is left to muse in the silence by her side. He realizes he’s followed her to a part of the ship he hadn’t seen before. On one side, Fest glimmers in the vastness emptiness of space, surrouned by an array of distant star systems. On the other, tucked away in the little space they could spare on a military ship, a small transparisteel case has two pressed wishblooms on display.

One white, one black: a daybloom and a nightbloom, equal like the Life and Death they represent.

He hadn’t seen one in years. Even the pressed, withered ones carried a sense of majesty in their faded beauty. Red veins line the petals, and Cassian swears they still glitter faintly in the harsh fluorescent light of the ship.

“Beautiful even after death, aren’t they?” Travia whispers. “One day, the wishblooms will return to Fest. They will blossom again, and so will our people.” She turns to Cassian. “And hopefully you will be there to join us.”

He stares at her. _After all this, did he really want to return?_

“Would you have told me the truth if I had decided to stay now?”

Her lips curl, and that is enough of an answer for him.

“We’ve all done unforgivable things in the name of a cause.”

Cassian lifts his chin and turns to look out the window at Fest.

“The Rebel Alliance is a cause that is worth any price,” he says, finally, thumb running over the holo’s switch. “My dedication to it and Fest are one and the same.”

Travia lets out a soundless breath. “I’m not asking for forgiveness,” she, hands drifting over the edge of her hover. “Not even understanding. I just needed you to know the truth.”

Cassian works his jaw. He is no saint. He could not forgive her, even if she had begged.

He is no saint. He is in no place to judge her.

He says nothing, and his blaster remains in the holster at his side.

“Thank you,” Travia says.

Cassian doesn’t reply and both stare out the viewport at Fest, remaining that way until approaching footsteps ring through the corridor.

He looks up to face Cata, who comes to a stop before them, hands crossed behind her back. 

“Commander Chan – Lieutenant Andor,” she nods at them respectively, then looks at him. "Your ship is primed for takeoff.” She turns, extending a datapad to Travia. "All that's left is your authorization."

He quirks an eyebrow as Travia presses her thumb to the screen, looking at Cata quizzically.

Her lips curl up into a slight smile. "I'll be sending you the documents shortly, you should receive a copy before you're out of Festian airspace." 

Cassian turns to Travia, who holds his gaze for a fleeting moment to nod, then turns back to her view of their home planet.

“Thank you," he says, voice brimming with an emotion like pride - satisfaction, perhaps, but tinged with bittersweet acceptance. He doesn't look back, following Cata back to the hangar where Kay and his ship await, thoughts lingering on his father's death and the future of the Rebellion.

Travia watches him walk away, the sound of his boots on polished floor fading away from her forever.

* * *

**14 AFE: some days later.**

“Cassian. It’s good to see you.”

He wonders if they thought he wouldn’t return. He shakes the Senator’s hand anyways.

“It’s nice to be back.”

“I hope the mission was fulfilling?”

Cassian had just finished a grueling debrief with Draven and is sure a reprimand awaits him. _Or worse_.

There is also the weakened latch in his mind, bruised and battered by the (in his own words, in his own lie) simple mission. The reawaken memories rattle their cages, freed of the darkness by Travia’s betrayal of his father. They are full of new horrors:

Soryn’s blood-flecked sneer. Rafael’s cooling body.

“It was,” he replies.

He realizes his accent is thicker and smiles a little to himself. “I learned a lot, and the ARG has reassured me they will stay with the Alliance for the foreseeable future. Though, there were some hiccups.”

Mon Mothma bows her head. “I heard. Draven isn’t very pleased with the situation…”

“I apologize sincerely.”

“No need,” Mon looks up to gently smile at him. “Cassian. You did a lot of good work.”

“I don’t mean to disrespect you but I inadvertently… killed an Imperial Colonel.” His throat tightens as Mon frowns, bracing himself for the inevitable.

“Which was a fatality we would have liked to avoid but a death of the _enemy_ nonetheless. You managed to secure the long term support of one of the Rebellion’s oldest allies, commencing the process of their amalgamation into the Resistance _and_ brought us word of a large-scale project the Empire is working on. That is _quite_ the achievement, and the Alliance feels you should be allowed to continue that work.”

“Really? I mean, thank you, Senator.”

She nods in acknowledgment, then lowers her voice. “Draven has informed me it is equally likely the Colonel died from ingesting a lullaby pill.” Cassian’s eyebrows shoot up. He hadn’t considered the option – he didn’t even know if Soryn even _had_ a pill. The consolation is reassuring nonetheless, and he relaxes.

“Senator Organa has a contact in the Senate who is willing to help you find out what the Empire is building with all that phrik.”

He nods, sensing a new assignment. It’s a welcome distraction, his mind already itching at the prospect of unravelling a new problem – a problem, for once, that he had personal ties to.

 _The best revenge is defeating the Empire_.

“Additionally, after witnessing how you expertly convinced the ARG to officially join the Rebel Alliance, we have decided to use your expertise in our recruitment division.” Mon waits, studying his expression. “Only if you are willing.”

“Of course,” Cassian replies without hesitation. _Recruitment._ It sounds refreshing, something lively with promise of growth. Much unlike the dreariness of espionage and assassination – of waiting in the shadows, of the click of rifles, of flipping over bodies with the toes of his boot...

“… you’ll need some specialized training, obviously, and a new handler. Naturally, it’ll come with a promotion to a new rank and a new codename-”

Cassian stifles an undignified splutter. “Pardon?” he squeaks.

Mon smiles, and this time it reaches her eyes. “ _Captain_ Andor, I’d like to introduce you to an old friend of mine. We like to say the Intelligence division is the Rebellion’s foundation, and this fine agent carries the weight of the Intelligence division in her hands...”

He can’t help but shift his weight to his toes as a figure materializes out of the darkness.

She’s older now, her lekku more prominent and features more defined, but Cassian has a knack for remembering the faces of many species.

It’s the woman who brought him to the Rebellion all those years ago.

“Cassian,” the Togruta begins. “I believe we’ve never been formally introduced. It’s nice to meet you.” She smiles and extends a hand. “I knew your mother.”

He takes her hand in his and shakes it, warmth creeping in as he does so.

Cassian learns, once again, that hope is something that lives long after the death of the messenger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> T____T That's the final chapter folks!  
> A special treat from me, marking the end of the first week of school: slam that Next Chapter button to read the Epilogue.  
> (I dearly hope that cameo didn't wreck the canon compliance of this fic.)


	12. Epilogue: Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He hopes he’s done enough."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hover over Spanish text (on desktop) for English translation.

Cassian never had hope for himself.

He knew the price of the future he wanted for the galaxy was his own life - and the lives of many others.

It was a price he was willing to pay.

It didn’t mean he liked paying it.

> _A blaster nudged under the ribs._
> 
> _He hopes it’s quick enough, painless enough._
> 
> _He gives himself three seconds to mourn._

He hated it, he hated playing this game. He hated being the harbinger of Death.

But if it wasn’t him, it would be someone else. Another lost child, hurled into a cold, cruel galaxy.

_Never again._

He had no hope for himself, but he had so much hope for the _galaxy._ For a cause bigger than himself, than his dead parents.

> _“Rebellions are built on hope,” he says, wondering if she will ever understand._

He was forever the Alliance’s recruiter, their parrot singing a song of rebellions and hope. He sang of an elusive future, just barely slipping through his grasp.

_Why don’t you come to me?_

_Why can’t I love you?_

_Why are you so distant?_

He trudged in the dirt, grimly wondering whether he even _had_ the right to kill. Who was he, to decide who lives and dies?

He was nobody.  

He was merely the Rebellion’s weapon, a smaller piece on a dejarik board the size of the galaxy.

Weapons don’t make decisions. They merely act.

This is how he consoled himself.  

> _A rifle cast to the side, raindrops splashing on the grip._
> 
> _He hopes it’s the right decision._
> 
> _Calling his brethren for a slaughter._
> 
> _He hopes they are enough of a sacrifice._

He knew this would be how his life would end: broken and bloodied. One last mission completed for the sake of the galaxy.

> _Underneath the pain and grime of Scarif she replies, “I do,” and he realizes she understands._

He hopes he’s done enough.

_Our lives for the Cause, our bodies for the Force. Long live the Rebellion – let our blood run in its veins._

" Sí, lo hiciste,  " Esper whispers in his ear, bright like a daybloom. " Ahora descansa,  Cassian.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more language note - or a hint, at least: do you remember what _Cassian_ and _Esper_ mean in Festian?  
>  The song lyrics (in the chapter the "song" is merely a metaphor, but they're actual lyrics) is a translation from the song _Cerca de la revolución_ which was recommended to me by @dasakuryo. I honestly think it fits better in that tumultuous post-Endor pre-Battle of Jakku time period, but those lyrics fit well here. 
> 
> I really hope you've enjoyed this journey as much as I have. Thank you so much for reading, and supporting my very first multichapter fic.  
> May the force be with you! :)


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